Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. — Benjamin Franklin

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Author: Benjamin Franklin

Insight: We tend to think of this advice as endorsing willful blindness—that marriage requires us to ignore our partner's flaws and pretend everything's fine. But that misses what Franklin was actually saying. Before marriage, you need clear vision because you're making a permanent choice. You can't unsee red flags, so look for them. Notice whether someone respects you when they're frustrated, how they treat people who can't do anything for them, whether you actually enjoy their company or just the idea of them. After marriage, though, the half-shut eyes aren't about denial. They're about choosing where to focus your limited attention. Your partner will always be annoying sometimes—they'll leave things where they don't belong, say tone-deaf things, disappoint you in small ways. If you kept your eyes wide open all the time, cataloging every flaw and misstep, you'd miss what they're actually good for in your life. The shift from scrutiny to selective focus isn't betrayal of your own judgment—it's recognizing that perfect compatibility was never the point. The point was choosing someone and then choosing them again, even when they're frustrating.