What I learned from two failed marriages is that above all else, you have to pick spouses with whom you can even have the luxury of doing these things. That requires finding someone of vaguely comparable social background and education level.

For a lot of people, this sort of assortative mating happens naturally because they draw on relatively healthy dating pools within their community—college classmates, colleagues, church, etc. Others, however, fall through the cracks. I feel that I did because I dropped out of university at age 20 and left the world of W-2 employment at age 22. What peer group? Solipsistic professional existence in a largely solipsistic and male-dominated profession. That's a very isolating existence and full of wrong turns unless you make strong, proactive efforts to stay in healthy social circles, which the average mid-20s person isn't going to be scrupulously careful about doing. It's very easy to start pulling dating partners from /dev/urandom, particularly amidst the loneliness and angst that eventually catches up to you.

This way lies madness, especially if you try to parlay that into marriage.

The American national mythology teaches us to look at people in highly individualised, democratic don't-judge-me ways, and leaves us blind to the fact that not all people are destined to fruitfully communicate or relate. In more traditional cultures, where social class boundaries are more explicit, this messaging is explicitly woven into people's upbringing. For better or worse, and despite the undeniable drawbacks of "traditional" social strictures, there's a certain timeless wisdom in that. Americans, however, commonly believe that any two people can build a bridge of understanding. In reality, that requires a vaguely comparable level of cultural development and intellectual sophistication. Otherwise, you're going to have to defend every one of the values you hold dear, and you're going to feel like you're having to explain them in crayon for three hours every time you do. And you're still going to fail because you're just not going to see eye-to-eye.

So, from where I sit, this "embrace change" idea is rather high on the — if you will — marital Maslow's Hierarchy. As a first step, make sure you've got basic interpersonal communication and some rudimentary compatibility sorted. For people who have been fortunate or made relatively conventional choices, this may seem an odd preoccupation, but if you've been in a union where that's lacking, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.