‘Tis the season for weddings. On Friday night, I attended yet another bachelorette party, this time for S. R., a founding member of Team Lush, who’s getting married at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego this coming weekend. About 10 girls got together to shower the bride-to-be with lingerie and advice before sending her off into matrimonial bliss. Of the 10, two are single; one is in a serious relationship; another has been married for a year; two are pregnant with their second children; and three have at least one kid each already. Conversation throughout the night hovered around husbands, pregnancy, children, grocery shopping, and sex. Only one of those topics I could personally relate to-OK, two, if you count grocery shopping for one.
At the party, we played a game in which we had to write down a piece of advice, and the honoree had to guess who wrote what. If she guessed wrong, she had to drink. Hey, it was a bachelorette party. My words of wisdom went something like this: “Don’t go more than a week without having sex, even if you don’t always feel like it.”
When read aloud, my advice got a few snickers from some of the moms in the room. “That obviously came from someone who doesn’t have kids yet,” R. F. said. She’s one of the pregos carrying her second child.
Not only someone who doesn’t have kids; my advice came from someone who’s not married or in a steady relationship, either. But I do know from past relationships that going more than a week without having it puts an emotional gap between you and your boyfriend/fiancé/husband. And I also know that, generally speaking, the less women have sex, the less they actually want or need it. And the flipside is true, too: The more we have it, the more we seem to crave it.
My favorite piece of advice came from a mother of two: “Marriage isn’t always a bowl full of cherries,” it read. “Don’t let anyone come between you, and always pick each other’s side.” Marriage, it seems, is a team of two. You’ve picked each other, for better or worse, so even if he acts like a schmuck once in a while, you should stand by him, and he, you-although all bets are off if he doesn’t help empty the dishwasher.
When my brother got married about eight years ago, the advice I passed along to him in my toast came from something my father told me, when I asked about the secret to a successful marriage: “Do at least one nice thing for each other every day,” he said. That means bringing her coffee or buying her a nice piece of jewelry before she even asks for it (I added in that last part).
I’m not sure it means showing up to the bachelorette party uninvited, but no one seemed to mind when The Fiancé surprised us at the new lounge La Pomme Rouge, where we ended up for the latter half of the bash.
I guess, with nuptials pending, one team’s loss is another team’s gain.