I talk more both from and in the shower now that I'm married than when I was single. Being in the shower no longer says "indisposed" and now means "I'm somewhere that's normal to talk to from the other side of the house."
Wife - "Why are you in the shower?"
Me - "Because!"
"Because why?"
"Because I have that thing!"
"What thing?"
"I can't hear you."
"Yes you can."
"Oh."
"What thing?!"
"The thing at David Baker's tonight."
"Man Night™'s tonight?"
"Yep."
"Is Man Night™ every ni--never mind. Not asking that question."
Water droplets fly everywhere. I open the sliding glass door and step out onto the frequently flattened bath rug and select a towel from a basket that has many options carefully folded and placed together. My life has neatened.
Pull up the jeans... and they barely fit. I think the reason I didn't eat a regular, three-square meals a day in college was because I knew if I did, my clothes might fit and I'd have to buy newer, bigger sets of them.
Which was a bad idea, because I was losing more money at the time than a lot of people make in a year.
"The good side of this is I'm kind of working out" I kind of think to myself as I strain to pull the "nice" pair of jeans up as far as they need to go so I'm legal to be in public again today.
"Do you want to work out today?"
Somehow she heard my thoughts. "How did you know I was thinking about working out?"
My lovely wife blinks, stares for a second, and then says plainly "you said it out loud, Sweetie." She's good. The word "Sweetie" does make things sound much better. I like it.
"So do you want to work out?" Still somewhat newly-married, I'm not a hundred percent in-tune with that survival/safety net of answers a husband must learn.
"Not really." Buzz. Wrong answer. The answer is *ding ALWAYS YES.
No narrative is necessary here because it would be entirely good questions and bad answers, both of which you already know. Let's just say I didn't pass the exam.
One of my Uncles has a great answer that he always tells me when the question of "do you want to work out" is brought up. He says "tell her you work out every day and if she wants to work out with you someday she should just go to work with you and find out how difficult it is."
He is divorced and has a nice big belly.
The answer is ALWAYS YES.
"James" you think. "Sometimes the answer is no though."
Nope.
"But what if she asks..." and then you make up a really lame, dumb scenario where the answer is technically "no." Okay, maybe you're like tiny bit right? But that still makes you mostly wrong. Because even though the answer was "no" you were still saying "yes" to the wife. The goal. In life. Is to mostly say "yes" to the wife. Even when you say "no."
"Wow James, you're figuring this marriage thing out early in life!" you think to yourself.
Nope. I'm creating a persona in the cyber-world of myself understanding marriage hoping that it will crawl out of the television and hop into my body someday. Just like that movie we watched at Man Night™.