Marriage is a commitment that you should celebrate with each other. Your mate is your lifetime friend. In order for someone to become your friend, you need to like them. Learn to like each other for there many things that please you. Learn how to have fun with each other laugh together and use humor in healthy ways. Apparently, Cicero’s wife and daughter made the choice of spouse for the daughter, all the while assuming that Cicero would be in agreement. He was. Ancient Roman Marriage in the Lower Classes Lower class women were generally married a little later in their lives. By later in their lives, this means that they were married in their late teens or early twenties. Be prepared to wait in line (on some days a LONG line) for your marriage license for example – without this not even the drive-thru wedding chapel is going to marry you! If you check in advance what you need, and have your paperwork in order, then the processing takes only as long as the line of couples ahead of you take to move along. True happiness is an attitude of noticing the good constantly coming our way. You will find that there is so much good coming every minute, there is no need to hand onto the past. We need to grasp onto a rope to keep ourselves from drowning even on dry land. The trick to finding happiness in our own lives and that of our marriage is to get into the habit of looking for good things, instead of griping all day about everything that has gone wrong. In spite of everything, there are ways to help save a marriage that is heading toward negativity. A healthy marriage is comprised of mutual understanding, listening and respecting each other’s differences, accepting arrangements and plans, and overall, having the confidence to work through setbacks and conflict. Social norms have changed. Love and marriage don’t have to go together – and with the more open society we live in accepting that we are free to love who we choose and not be restricted by gender, then in some cases it isn’t even legally possible for them to do so. With homosexual marriage being a political and legal hot potato around the world, love and marriage is even possible for gay couples in some areas, whilst in others it’s still illegal and so love and marriage in the traditional sense is denied.