Ellen McCarthy Dishes the Dirt on Weddings, Relationships

According to a 2010 Pew Research survey, approximately six-in-ten (61%) men and women who have never married say they would like to get married. Not surprisingly, more than 90% of people marry by age 50, according to the American Psychological Association. Yet, about 40-50% of married couples in the United States divorce.

So what is the key to a happy marriage? While there certainly isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, author Ellen McCarthy (“The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life From a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook”), who wrote the On Love column for The Washington Post for four years, has some great advice for those who are dating, newly engaged, newly married, or long married. (One of my favorite pieces of advice from Ellen: “I always remember my buddy said to me, ‘If you can make it through this [wedding planning], you deserve to be married.”)

Q: What inspired you to take what you learned covering the weddings beat for The Washington Post and turn into book?
Ellen: When I was covering weddings, I felt like I was learning a lot I didn’t know before I started the beat. And I was finding that everything I was learning was very useful and applicable in my own life. And then beyond that, I also think that I was really annoying my friends. We would be in bar somewhere and I was telling them about what one couple said, or how one couple I met did something and it was really fun. I found myself always kind of referring to “the expert I interviewed on Tuesday” or “the couple I met last week…” I just realized maybe I should stop annoying my friends and just write it down for those who want to read it.

Q: What have you learned that you think has helped you the most in your own relationships and marriage?
Ellen: First of all, one of biggest things is that this stuff can be learned. I mean, you’re never going to read a book and then know how to have relationships. Or talk to somebody and figure out all answers. But we can put ourselves in the position to have more tools in our toolkit. We can collect more information that can help us be successful. We don’t have to treat relationships and love like magic fairy dust that shouldn’t be tampered with.

We put such high expectations on relationships and marriage. And that’s sort of the second part of this. We expect so much from relationships these days. We want this one person to be our rock and our soulmate and our activity partner and our financial equal and all of these different things. I feel like a lot of relationships crumble under those expectations. So if we can just take it down a notch — what we expect from marriage. A lot of people think once they find the right person then that’s it. They’ve mastered this relationship thing because they’ve found the right person and everything else will just fall into line. And obviously that doesn’t happen. There is still going to be really tough things that the two of you have to grapple with together, days when you just, frankly, don’t like each other. But whatever it is… we need to get this, sort of expect that going in and know that that’s the norm. That’s the way it is. And then it’s wonderful and amazing and spectacular and worth, you know, the occasional down moments. Then I think that we won’t freak out so much when they come. That certainly helped me a lot. To me, it felt like a lesson that was worth passing along.

Q: Do you still cover weddings?
Ellen: I don’t actually. I had a baby and when I came back from maternity leave last June, I became a general assignment reporter. I was sort of ready. I felt like this was my capstone project and I wrote my thesis. And I was ready to have my Saturday nights back. Now I write mostly profiles of people, writing about people’s lives, just not necessarily their romantic lives.

Q: What do you miss most about the weddings beat?
Ellen: You know, I always loved sitting down with the couples. It never got boring to me, just sitting down and hearing how this crazy, truly magical, all too commonplace, totally amazing thing unfolded for these two people. The stories just were uplifting certainly, but also kind of restored every time your faith in the goodness of the world. There are these wonderful things that happen in life. And life can be hard in a million different ways but when two people find each other and fall in love, there is such a pure goodness in that. It always felt like really an honor to be sitting with these two people and hearing the story of how that came to be.

I liked going to weddings. It was an awkward endeavor in a lot of ways. I was sort of this strange girl in black lurking in the corner. But I especially loved wedding ceremonies because I didn’t feel as out of place. I was like any other random guest sitting in a chair or pew or whatever. And something happens in that moment when two people exchange vows. I loved being there for it. I still do. I love going to a wedding. I hated planning a wedding, but I love attending other people’s.

Q: Obviously writing a book is extremely different than writing a newspaper article… pulling the material, figuring out how to write the story. Can you talk about the process?
Ellen: It was daunting. Quite daunting. Before I went into it… as a journalist you’re used to being on a daily or weekly deadline, which means you have x number of hours between now and then to get it done. And it doesn’t matter how perfect or imperfect it is, you have to hand it in because it has to go in to the paper at a certain time. So the thought of sort of having this extended period with which to have to sort of control my own schedule and my own self-discipline was definitely a little scary at first. I had to make it manageable and frankly what happened for me was that I put myself on a newspaper deadline schedule where, essentially, I told myself I had to write one chapter a day in order to get this done. Once I figured that out, that structure dictated the timing of my days and also my thought process. I would know that right now I’m working on the dating section or commitment section or whatever it was. So here are the lessons that I charted out, and thinking ahead, I’ll do this one on Tuesday, this one on Thursday, that on Friday. And I sort of plowed through them, which is not necessarily such an inspiring thought.

It was nice to kind of have the chance to take a more global view, to really sort of step back, think about what learned, what was most important out of those 4.5 years, what I thought would be of use to other people.

I loved it.

Q: Do you want to write another book?
Ellen: My only goal was this book and it still is. Just let me have done a good enough job on this one that someone someday lets me do it again.

Read an excerpt from Ellen’s book on The Washington Post web site.

Ellen McCarthy is an award-winning feature writer for the Style section of The Washington Post. She joined the Post in 2000 and wrote about business, technology, arts and entertainment before launching the paper’s On Love section in 2009. She has interviewed hundreds of couples and written extensively about weddings and relationships. Her first book, “The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook,” is the culmination of that work.