Quick one-liner: wedding advice.

We attended a wedding this past weekend on Mark's side of the family.  

Afterward, as we arrived at the reception, we encountered a table where guests could leave a thumbprint, in our choice of several shades of green, on a black-and-white image of a bare-branched tree -- leafing the tree -- that would form a framed memento.  I thought that was a nice variation on the guestbook idea.

As I struggled in with one teenager and four more children in tow, my eye was caught by a glass container and a stack of notecards and a pen, with a sign inviting us to write our advice for the newlyweds on a card and drop it into the container.

This is not such an unusual variation, and I might have expected it, after all.  

As Mark and the kids went on down the hall towards the kids' room with the movies and coloring pages and the grownups' room with the open bar and the trays of hors d'oeuvres, I was the only one who paused to write something, but I did not have time to think for more than a few seconds.  On the other hand, I take questions like this rather seriously.

A number of things went through my mind.  I summed them up with this one line:

Never try to get even.

If I had had more time to think, I would have added:  "Interpret that as broadly as possible."

What one line would you write?

Comments

[Jen A]

Don't keep score.
Almost the same thing as yours, but the advice I bite my tongue from giving.

[bearing]

Why bite your tongue? Oh, maybe if you are talking to someone who very obviously IS keeping score...

[Christy P.]

I'm with Jen, but I usually say it longer as "As soon as you start keeping score, you lose"

[Tabitha]

Assume your spouse has good intentions in his/her actions and words.

[bearing]

Saw a quote just today (it was Fr. Longenecker quoted in an article by Simcha at OSV) that may be a contender:

"Gender roles are not law; they are there to help us achieve complementary love.”

I think it sails right between the goalposts of rejecting gender roles as irrelevant, and insisting that the traditional ones must always be adhered to.

[Christy P.]

I thought of another one. Sex is a gift, not a weapon.

[Bearing]

Oh yes, that's true. Nor a negotiating chip.

[Kristin]

I'm with Tabitha-"Assume positive intent". I saw that on Hallie Lord's blog and wrote it down. I must remember this often!!