"To be opened after a fight": An elderly aunt gives her niece a sealed envelope containing advice for a lasting marriage
Kathy and Brandon have been married for 9 years now, have children and have experienced their ups and downs, like all couples in this world.
One day, the two were invited to the wedding of some acquaintances and, thinking of that event, they remembered their own wedding and a gift that until then they had never opened.
It was a small package with the words "Do not open until the first disagreement. Aunt Alison". After all those years, the time had finally come to know what the package contained.
Although they had mainly forgotten for all that time about Kathy's aunt's gift, a part of them had always tried to hide from it, so as not to admit to themselves that in all those years there had been more than one disagreement.
"Of course, during these nine years of marriage," says Kathy, "We had had disagreements several times, but we decided not to open the gift because inside we knew it would symbolize our defeat as a couple. We felt that opening the gift would confirm that we lacked something to make our marriage work, and so we decided to wait and try to use only our own strength and determination to keep our marriage going."
"For nine years," continues the woman, "that gift remained on a shelf in a closet, collecting dust, without being opened. Whenever we thought it was time to open it, we reflected on our marriage and took giant steps towards a greater tolerance and understanding of each other. So today, on the eve of someone else's wedding, we decided to open this gift."
"Inside the package, we found some money and some instructions inside two separate envelopes with our individual names. We each opened our envelope and read that whenever we had an argument, I had to buy a pizza and some beauty products to prepare a nice hot bath, and Brandon had to go buy some flowers and a bottle of wine.
After we thought about it, we finally understood the meaning of this gift that told us that the tools for making our marriage work could not be stored in a box, but they had to be found inside of us. This is what Aunt Alison wanted to tell us, that the strength to overcome a disagreement was within us --- and the pizza, the wine, and the bath products were just the occasions that would remind us both of this truth."
And what was the strangest wedding gift that you received?
