In a brief interview clip last year with podcaster and author Steven Bartlett, noted NYU professor Scott Galloway quoted billionaire Warren Buffett.
“Warren Buffett said the key to a healthy marriage is low expectations…”
Then Professor Galloway chuckled.
Sometimes, the truth hurts… but other times, it’s pretty funny.
“If you’re going to get married, and you want a marriage that’s going to last… not necessarily the happiest marriage, you know… but you want a marriage that going to last. What quality do you look for in a spouse? What one quality? Do you look for brains? Do you look for humor? Do you look for character? Do you look for beauty?
“No. You look for low expectations…”
To be completely accurate, Warren Buffett is not necessarily talking, here, about a “healthy” marriage. He’s talking about a “lasting” marriage. We’re not even sure if a “healthy” marriage is possible in this day and age, unless we’re talking about a marriage where both people are eating a low-carb diet.
But we can possibly have a “lasting” marriage. In a lasting marriage — whether it be with a spouse, or with a business partner — the essential element is low expectations… according to one of the world’s wealthiest investors.
In their podcast, Professor Galloway and author Steven Bartlett were discussing the growing trend, among young men and women, to basically write off marriage, children, and families. To write off intimate relationships, period.
To have a marriage that lasts, we don’t need to feel happy, or fulfilled, or supported, or cherished… and neither does our spouse. In fact, we ought to expect the whole thing to go to hell. (And when it doesn’t, we can be pleasantly surprised.)
Easy for me to say, of course. I got married back in the 1980s, right out of college, like I was supposed to do. Back when boys married girls, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, Warren Buffett and Scott Galloway were not handing out free advice back in those days. My new wife Darlene and I were expecting a long, happy marriage… rather than just a long marriage.
Mr. Buffett knows a thing or two about long marriages. He married his wife Susan in 1952, and they had three children. The couple began living separately in 1977, although they remained married until Susan Buffett’s death in July 2004.
Two years later, in 2006 — on his 76th birthday — Mr. Buffett married his longtime companion, Astrid Menks, who was then 60 years old.
Astrid Menks — now, Ms. Buffett — had lived with Warren since his wife’s departure to San Francisco in 1977. Susan had in fact arranged for the two to meet before she left Omaha to pursue her singing career. All three were close, and Christmas cards to friends were signed, “Warren, Susie and Astrid”.
Which might help explain Mr. Buffett’s interesting advice about marriages that last. The essential trick is to avoid getting divorced.
Obviously, this was a trick my ex-wife Darlene and I did not fully master. (I also never learned how to juggle, and neither did Darlene. But that did not figure into our marital problems.)
When Darlene moved to Phoenix with her new boyfriend — while we were still technically married — I thought that move necessitated a divorce. Or at least, strongly suggested one.
I didn’t realize we could all just sign the Christmas cards together.