Marriage is hard work at any age; that platitude is, sadly, as true as it is hackneyed. But now that I’m old enough to accumulate my own stack of holiday cards every year, some of the from the Jackie Harrises of the world, who were reckless enough to get married before the age of thirty but often seem to beam the brightest in their family photos (probably because they also had kids earlier and those kids are now sentient beings who will soon be capable of driving themselves to band practice), I’ve observed something that probably would have surprised my mother: The young are often harder workers – or at least better team players – in the quarry that is marriage. They do not, as I did, bring a mortgage and mid-stage career and an assemblage of tastes and opinions and biases and assumptions formed over more than three decades. They bring only a toothbrush. Whatever else the need, they’ll acquire as a couple. Whatever kind of people they turn out to be, they’ll turn into under the heady influence of the other. – pgs. 68-69, The Best Possible Experience