Building a marriage is like building a house (10-step blueprint)

Mr. Cubic Zirconia here, dear reader. 

But if you’re currently building a house, this article could give you some tips.

° ˛ ° ˚* _Π_____*☽*˚ ˛

✩ ˚˛˚*/______/__＼。✩˚ ˚˛

˚ ˛˚˛˚｜ 田田｜門｜ ˚ ˚

´´ ̛ ̛ ´´ ´´ ´´ ̛ ̛ ´´ ´´ ´´ ̛ ̛ ´´ ´´

If you’re married, this article could help strengthen the relationship: because building a house is  similar in many ways to building a marriage.

Historically, people don’t typically don’t buy a house delivered fully assembled and with all the parts.

People talk about a “successful blueprint for marriage”, but it’s important to remember that marriages aren't pre-manufactured. You also won’t be able to buy a successful marriage fully assembled and with all the parts, either.

Building a successful marriage requires two people who are committed to working together over time and despite challenges, personality conflicts, disagreements and all sorts of petty annoyances.

It takes two committed individuals choosing to go it together, who build a foundation of shared goals and values, and who are willing to compromise in the pursuit of mutual happiness– compromising on more than just which paint colors to choose and whether we want hardwood floors or carpeting.

To some degree, every big choice made in a great marriage ought to be a compromise.

And when you set out to build a house, there’s plenty of room for practicing your compromiser skillz (especially if you need to build within a certain budget or hope to complete certain fix-it projects within a specified time period). 

    Plus tough timeline worries.
      And budget considerations.

Yet if you’re married AND building a house together with your significant other... God help you ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣤⣴⣶⣶⣤⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣤⣶⣿⣿⣿⡿⢿⣿⡿⠿⠛⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⡀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢻⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠀⢿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⡿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁⠀⠈⢿⣿⣆⠀⣠⣾⡿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⢻⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣤⣄⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣦⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣶⣶⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠐⠛⠛⠛⠛⠛⠛⠻⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠛⠛⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

(cuz I’m not sure we can eliminate that kind of Boss-level stress…even though we’ll try with our couples’ marriage-and-house-building tips below).⠀⠀

And if it’s the former reason that brought you here to fill your toolbelt, take a deep breath and realize that building a home together– while it may be super stressful– can also be one of the most fun couple’s activities in a lifetime of life, love and laughter.

That’s because building a marriage can be like building a house that's perfectly tailored to your most crucial needs and individual desires.

Let's explore how building a marriage is like building a house, step by step.

1) A Strong Foundation: You Can't Build without One

A good marriage, like a well-founded house, needs a strong foundation. 

The beauty of putting a marriage ahead of everything else in a couple’s life is that it's a foundation for not one life but two lives– a strong foundation you can build a shared life upon. It’s the place to start. 

Welcome to step one.

A foundation isn’t created with theory or airy-fairy ideas.

It’s built literally from the ground up. 

It's gonna take sweat and hard work before you can lay your foundation: dig, dig, damn...digging some more. 

Dig, dig, dig with questions. You gotta know each other and what you both want if you’re gonna build a life together. 

What's a good marital foundation? 

Love makes a pretty durable foundation by itself, but love is an even more stable foundation when it's enhanced by mutual attraction, respect for your partner and trust for each other. 

Perhaps one of the first shared goals will be to buy that plot of land together where one day you as a couple will lay the foundation and build that dream home?

2) Timeline: Building a marriage to last a lifetime

Marriage is meant to last a lifetime (knock on wood).

Accept the truth of this NOW if you want an exceptional married life together with your significant other: your relationship will always be “under construction”. 

Yet there’s far more to a marriage than one day.

No wedding is ever perfect, just as no marriage is going to be perfect. 

And that exciting day of “groundbreaking” will likely be a number of weeks, months or even years in the past once the home you’re building is supposedly “complete” (depending on your budget and other factors).

The time of engagement is special, and you should treat it as such. It’s not a race to finish being engaged. Whenever a couple disagrees in the wedding planning process, we advise that they do so respectfully. Take time to listen. Be affectionate regularly. Apologize more quickly than you might any other time, especially if you are the partner who cares less about the details of the wedding than the other.

All of those experiences will transfer over into building a life together as a couple AFTER the successful wedding day.

If that advice resonates with you, it probably won’t surprise you that we would advise the exact same things for a couple building a house together.

Sure, you want to choose a timeline during which everything will be “done” but the groundbreaking is step one…and afterwards, you just keep completing the steps.

3) Budgeting: The cost of one thing is sometimes cash plus sacrifice of another

Building a house should be fun! 

One thing to keep in mind: even the wealthiest people in the world suffer wedding envy when they try to out-spend others in creating the perfect wedding, and yet they fall short every time. Same goes for house envy.

And don't even get us started on deck size envy. Arguments about deck size behind the house a couple I know was building ended at least one marriage that I know of. Crazy but true. Don’t be caught in that trap because yours will never measure up!

Instead, wedding planners would be well-served to place their focus on the marriage-to-come and not the wedding alone. 

In the same way it’s just not smart to go into debt for a one-day wedding you can’t afford, we’ve also got to be realistic about costs going into building a home. 

Instead, try to think about all the many years you’ll live in the home, with whom, and what types of activities you envision yourself doing. 

4) Materials: What are you made of?

Picking your materials during building a house is important, especially in the kitchen. Marble is a valuable building material and should not be taken for granite. 

Did you think our pun was no fun? That’s concrete evidence we’d probably end up with a staple gun shot to the foot and a ton of bricks dropped on our heads (if you married us).

Curb appeal, dear reader, is not the same as getting kicked to the curb.

Sense of humor is one of the many materials that make up a person.

And when those materials delight another person, that’s a good way to build a relationship. When those materials annoy another person…that’s a good way to end up in the doghouse!

Cherry or oak wood cabinets?
  Paint vs. wallpaper.
   Hardwood floors or carpeting?
    Tile vs. linoleum.
     Stand-up shower or bathtub?
       His and hers vs. shared bathroom sinks.
        Best appliances or cheapest that work?
         To fireplace or not to fireplace…
          Flathead vs. Phillips.
           Brick or vinyl siding?

And those can all be tough decisions– except for bricks. 

That joke too lowbrow for you? 

Beyond the brick…what about the rest of those choices for materials? 

But each material decision requires discussion and compromise when a couple builds a house together. Before you break ground, there’s plenty of elbow room to figure out if you want a reading room or a breakfast nook, hardwood or carpet, a man cave or a wraparound porch.

If a couple is building together, you hammer this stuff out together in talk long before you pick up that first nail– otherwise you’ve got a screw or two loose (in our humble opinion), because once the walls go up a lot of the things you “wish you had done” will cost a LOT more money to do it later in a future renovation.

And if you’re building a life together through marriage, it’s smart to know what materials make up your intended partner long before you walk down that aisle.

Is he or she strong where you’re weak? Do your abilities complement each other? What do you admire about him or her? Can you live with those things in your partner that annoy you a bit while dating? Show ‘em what you’re made of!

5) Essential Systems: A life, a person, a marriage, a house

All homes have essential systems-– water, plumbing, heating and air conditioning, electrical, locks and security for controlling entrance and exit.

These are the systems and processes that make a house function. 

Your marriage will involve multiple systems too. 

The way you communicate with each other, the way you manage your finances, the methods with which you raise any children you may have, how you make plans and schedule things together, controlling who is welcome (and how much!) in your family’s life and home... these 'systems' develop over time. 

How will you set these systems up in a way that’s fair to both of you? 

How will you ensure that they work in a way that enhances and doesn't detract from your marriage? 

These are ways of living together that don't come in a kit. However, they are systems that you can build and manage together– if you have the right instructions.

But truth to tell, the instructions aren’t always going to make sense.

I used to buy and sell houses for a living. And I can tell you, there’s all sorts of mistakes when it comes to DIY home-building. Even contractors that build a bunch of houses per year aren’t beyond dumb mistakes like putting the “HOT” water in the shower behind the “COLD” knob, or installing a kitchen cabinet over top where the room’s second electrical outlet was supposed to be.

Even when the instructions are correct, you still may not get the picture perfect house (or marriage). That’s one reason we have to seek advice from those who know what they’re doing and be careful that what we do reflects what we believe.

And still, you’ve gotta accept that sometimes you have to put something together over and over again.

6) Labor: Who does what, how and why?

He asks her to get him the hammer but she accidentally gives him the drill.

She tried to use a studfinder, but somehow ended up married to a Dad Bod.

Once you’ve got the materials sorted out, and good plans for the major systems, building a house becomes a matter of putting in the work. 

1. The work isn’t easy, man. It takes strength to build together. If you're not up to it, pal, we hope you're at least man enough to give your future would-be wife “the too weak notice” before you waste any more of her time.
   
   
2. Every person isn’t suited to do every job. Forget gender roles and who does what heavy lifting; there are plenty of difficult jobs in a marriage household, and plenty of hard things to do as you go about building a house. When you DIY, yourself ought to be able to do whatever it is. And if she can’t, and he can’t…hire that job to a specialist and keep building.

7) Roof: Weathering the Bad Times

Budget and timeline planned. Solid foundation, done. Materials bought and prepped. Major systems- check. Division of labor completed. Grab the champagne, because it’s time to party and raise the roof…right?

Yes and no. Every house needs a roof to protect the structure and everything within the home. Ask any long-time family breadwinner if you don’t know, but keeping a roof over the heads of people you love is a serious matter. 

Our house is coming together. But this isn’t the time yet to celebrate. Put that celebratory drink down for just a moment and join me over here on the scaffold.

I wanna whisper some wisdom in your weary ears. 

Shit’s gonna happen, friend.

We’ve gotta accept that life comes with challenges. 

Rain. Sleet. Snow. Lightning. Hail Mary full of grace, let me win this weather race.

So the sooner a couple building together can get this roof up over your new-construction house, the better off you’re gonna be.

One of the tough parts about marriage is that you’ve got to keep protecting yourself and your partner from the same things…over and over again. 

Oh, it snowed again in November? Yeah, and it’s gonna rain again in April.

Yet one of the beautiful things about marriage is that you agree to weather life's challenges together. So when those challenges come– whether it’s relocation, illness, addictions, in-law issues, parenting, money problems or whatever storm tries to overshadow your mutual marital bliss… you as a couple CAN weather that storm with the right roof atop the home of your marriage.

If love, trust and respect are the foundation, and shared goals the cement and bricks, MUTUAL COMMITMENT is the protective roof atop the house and the life you’re building together in a marriage. 

Good or bad, better or worse…marriage is a promise from wedding to hearse.

Believe that, and agree to live by it and you have to have a roof that protects your love even as you face hardships in all their various forms.

Ignore the roof security of mutual commitment and today’s society will only too happily help you justify it being “normal” to give up, quit, and divorce when the tornado comes blowing into your relationship without warning.

8) Furniture and Appliances

Be careful, because here you can spend a lot of money. Just like two cars can both get you from point A to point B, but one costs $2,000 USD and the other $200,000-- there’s a wide range of expected expenses you might encounter when outfitting the new home you’re building. 

If that’s a sub-zero walk-in fridge, high-end baking equipment, steaming whirlpool jacuzzi for 10 of your closest friends, then go for it! Do you get excited by a ten-thousand dollar massage chair, super luxe garage tailgating complete with custom sports-mascot grill, or a solid-block cherry-wood replica of the Resolute Desk for your office? We won’t judge how you wanna outfit your space.

Frankly, though, from conversations with many of our customers over the years, I do think many couples in the CubicZirconia.com cosmos think like my wife and I do with regards to “things” in the house. Even our most affluent customers seem a bit frugal in this way. 

This “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude is kind of the knothole through which we view furniture and appliances in our own homes.

If the regular desk does 90% of what we need, we don’t buy a fancy desk with more bells and whistles. We might like the idea of a pizza oven, but with nowhere really to put it we don’t buy it. The leather couch set that wipes down easily and the dual recliners still work even though there’s some light cracking on the sides? It’ll do for now. We can stick a second freezer just for meat in the garage; no need for expensive kitchen renovations and installing a walk-in freezer one hundred steps closer to the kitchen.

Again, YMMV (your mileage may vary). But for us in our marriage, in building a house and making a home for our family, there are far more important things to spend money on than a bunch of new, fancy stuff to put inside it.

9) Let's Decorate!

Yeah. My advice here? Just let her do it.

Sure, someone is gonna read this and comment below that what I’ve just said is sexist, generalist piggishness from a chauvinist male jerk. 

That’s ok. I’ll oink if you want me to oink, but my own wife doesn’t agree I’m being any of those things (this time), and I’ll give you one guess for why that might be.

The point is that one of the two of you cares MUCH more about decorations than the other. I’m saying let that partner pick what he/she wants and stay out of his or her way on these decisions. You’ll both be happier if the one who doesn’t care (e.g. me) lets the one who does (e.g. her) choose all this stuff. 

At the very least, don’t let something as trivial as paint colors, cabinet designs, or deck size envy cause relationship stress. 

Building that house together as a couple? Just promise me this: if things get heated, don't try to shoot each other with grout sealant, ok? 

Caulk fighting is illegal.

10) Maintain, Maintain, Maintain!

Remember that no matter what size house you build, you have to maintain it! 

Don't take for granted that your HVAC system will never quit on you. 

That trendy paint color you had to have last year; it might grate on your nerves next week. 

Always be in tune with your marriage's needs. 

Understand your needs as well as your partner's and confront them with care and attention. The investment in time you put in now will help you create a marriage that feels like home to you both.

Guess what else?! 

It's a lot less expensive to build a great marriage than to build a house. 

Even if you're starting out in an apartment or renting a house, you can focus on building a marriage that will shelter your love for years to come.

Here’s to nailing it,

Mr. Cubic Zirconia

P.S. I started this blog by telling you to come back later if you wanted to hear a joke about construction…since I was still “working on it”. 

Why did it take so long for the construction worker to buy an engagement ring and propose to get married?

He was building up to it.