Marriage Jokes

A husband-and-wife photography team we know shoot their pictures together, do their developing and printing together—in fact, they're together 24 hours of the day. We wondered how they managed to keep up such good working relations.

"Well, frankly," the wife said, "it wouldn't work out if one of us didn't have a good disposition."

"Which one?" we asked.

"Oh," she laughed, "we take turns."

I was about to leave the house on an errand, and my husband was getting ready for a dental appointment. "I wish we could trade places," I said, knowing how much he dreaded the coming ordeal.

He watched as I gathered our newborn onto my left arm and picked up a package with that hand. I flung a diaper bag and my purse over my right shoulder, grabbed our two-year-old with my free hand and wrestled the car keys from him.

My husband shook his head. "No, thanks," he said. "At least where I'm going they give you anesthesia."

 

 

After noticing how trim my husband had become, a friend asked me how I had persuaded him to diet. It was then I shared my dark secret: "I put our teenage son's shorts in his underwear drawer."

Needing to shed a few pounds, my husband and I went on a diet that had specific recipes for each meal of the day. I followed the instructions closely, dividing the finished recipe in half for our individual plates. We felt terrific and thought the diet was wonderful—we never felt hungry!

But when we realized we were gaining weight, not losing it, I checked the recipes again. There, in fine print, was "Serves 6."

During an attack of laryngitis I lost my voice completely for two days. To help me communicate with him, my husband devised a system of taps.

One tap meant "Give me a kiss." Two taps meant "No." Three taps meant "Yes"—and 95 taps meant "Take out the garbage."

For our 20th anniversary my husband and I vacationed in Hawaii, where we went snorkeling. After an hour in the water everyone got back on the boat, except for me and one handsome young man. As I continued my underwater exploring, I noticed that everywhere I swam, he swam. I snorkeled for another 40 minutes. So did he. I climbed back in the boat; so did he.

I felt very flattered and, as I took off my fins, asked him coyly why he had stayed in the water for so long. "I'm the lifeguard," he replied matter-of-factly. "I couldn't get out until you did."

One evening my husband's golfing buddy drove his secretary home after she had imbibed a little too much at an office reception. Although this was an innocent gesture, he decided not to mention it to his wife, who tended to get jealous easily.

Later that night my husband's friend and his wife were driving to a restaurant. Suddenly he looked down and spotted a high-heel shoe half hidden under the passenger seat. Not wanting to be conspicuous, he waited until his wife was looking out her window before he scooped up the shoe and tossed it out of the car. With a sigh of relief, he pulled into the restaurant parking lot. That's when he noticed his wife squirming around in her seat.

"Honey," she asked, "have you seen my other shoe?"

My granddaughter's wedding, the DJ polled the guests to see who had been married the longest. Since it turned out to be my husband and me, the DJ asked us, "What advice would you give to the newly married couple?"

I said, "The three most important words in a marriage are, 'You're probably right.' "

Everyone then looked expectantly at my husband. "She's probably right," he said.

One day my housework-challenged husband decided to wash his sweatshirt. Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to me, "What setting do I use on the washing machine?"

"It depends," I replied. "What does it say on your shirt?"

"University of Oklahoma," he yelled back.

My wife and I were comparing notes the other day. "I have a higher IQ, did better on my SATs and make more money than you," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but when you step back and look at the big picture, I'm still ahead," I said.

She looked mystified. "How do you figure?"

"I married better," I replied.

A couple we know were in Lamaze class, where they had an activity requiring the husband to wear a bag of sand—to give him an idea of what it feels like to be pregnant. The husband stood up and shrugged, saying, "This doesn't feel so bad."

The teacher then dropped a pen and asked him to pick it up.

"You want me to pick up the pen as if I were pregnant?" he asked.

"Exactly," replied the instructor.

To the delight of the other husbands, he turned to his wife and said, "Honey, pick up that pen for me."

 

 

For my fourth Caesarian section I opted for a bikini incision, which, along with the previous scars, would form an arrow on my tummy. "Honey," my husband joked when I told him, "after 13 years and 4 kids, I hardly need directions."

Some newly married friends were visiting us when the topic of children came up. The bride said she wanted three children, while the young husband demurred, saying two would be enough for him. They discussed this discrepancy for a few minutes until the husband thought he'd put an end to things, saying boldly, "After our second child, I'll just have a vasectomy."

Without a moment's hesitation, the bride retorted, "Well, I hope you'll love the third one like it's your own!"

 

 

I was bending over to wipe up a spill on the kitchen floor when my wife walked into the room behind me. "See anything you like?" I asked suggestively.

"Yeah," she said. "You doing housework."

A Connecticut chap, an incorrigible practical joker, often makes his long-suffering wife the butt of his painful pranks. But last fall she finally got her chance to even the score. The couple were spending the weekend in a New York hotel. It was a hot night, and when they got back to their room after the theater, the husband peeled off his clothes and stretched out on the bed to cool off. By the time his wife was ready for bed, he was fast asleep and she decided not to disturb him. Some hours later, he woke up and groped his way in the dark toward the bathroom. By mistake he opened the outside door and, still groggy, was halfway down the hall before he became aware of his predicament. He turned back hastily. Then, to his horror, he realized that he was not only locked out but had forgotten his room number. Frantic, he rushed to the elevator bank, pressed the button and hid around the corner. When the elevator arrived, he thrust out his arm and beckoned wildly. The operator took one look, slammed the elevator door and went for the house detective. When the detective arrived, he found the unfortunate guest cowering in a corner. He gave him a sheet from the linen closet, called the desk to check his assertion that he was registered at the hotel with his wife and escorted him to his room. Pounding on the door until the wife opened it, the detective said, "This man claims to be your husband. Is he?" For a moment she stared at the sheet-draped figure; then she said icily, "I've never seen him before in my life."  

Neighbors of ours had a terrible disagreement over a patio they wanted for their backyard. The wife had rather grand ideas, while the husband wanted costs kept to a minimum. The wife won out, and the construction bill climbed higher and higher.

I dropped by one day, when the patio was near completion, and was surprised to find the husband smiling from ear to ear as the workmen smoothed over the surface. I remarked how nice it was to see a grin replace the frown he had been wearing lately.

“You see where they’re smoothing that cement?” he replied. “I just threw my wife’s credit cards in there.”

 

 

While a woman is keeping vigil beside her husband's deathbed, he says to her, "Before I die, I have something to confess to you."

"Shh, not now," she replies.

"But I need to tell you: I cheated on you," he admits.

"Yes, I know," she replies.

"I need to clear my conscience before I die… "

"Shh," she counters. "Just lie back and let the poison work."

Pregnant with our second child, I was determined to ride my exercise bike at least two miles a day. Late one night, having put it off all day, I climbed aboard the noisy contraption in our bedroom, where my husband was reading a book.

After about 20 minutes of listening to the squeaky machine, he glanced up, somewhat annoyed. "Don't you think it's time you turned around and headed for home?" he asked.

 

 

Soon after we were married, my husband, Paul, stopped wearing his wedding band.

"Why don't you ever wear your ring?" I asked.

"It cuts off my circulation," Paul replied.

"I know," I said. "It's supposed to."

 

 

My husband is wonderful with our baby daughter, but often turns to me for advice. Recently I was in the shower when he poked his head in to ask, "What should I feed Lily for lunch?"

"That's up to you," I replied. "There's all kinds of food. Why don't you pretend I'm not home?"

A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. I answered it to hear my husband saying, "Yeah, hi, honey. Uh…what should I feed Lily for lunch?"

My friend’s husband is always telling her that housekeeping would be a snap if only she would organize her time better. Recently he had a chance to put his theory into practice while his wife was away.

When I popped in one evening to see how he was managing, he crowed, "I made a cake, frosted it, washed the kitchen windows, cleaned all the cupboards, scrubbed the kitchen floor, walls and ceiling and even had a bath."

I was about to concede that perhaps he was a better manager than his wife, when he added sheepishly, "When I was making the chocolate frosting, I forgot to turn off the mixer before taking the beaters out of the bowl, so I had to do all the rest."

As I was stepping into the shower after an afternoon of yard work, my wife walked into the bathroom. "What do you think the neighbors would say if I cut the grass dressed like this?" I asked.

Giving me a casual glance, she replied, "They'd say I married you for your money."

 

 

To our shock and horror, my sister-in-law and I realized we had each been married nearly 50 years. "That's a long time," I observed.

"A long, long time," she agreed. Then she smiled. "Something just occurred to me."

"What's that?"

"If I had killed your brother the first time I felt like it, I'd be out of jail by now."

My mother and I were having a mother-daughter talk about the qualities to look for in a husband. She stressed that husband and wife should be as much alike as possible in interests and backgrounds. I brought up the point that opposites often attract.

“Diane,” she said emphatically, “just being man and woman is opposite enough.”

When my wife had to rush to the hospital unexpectedly, she asked me to bring her a few items from home. One item on the list was "comfortable underwear." Worried I'd make the wrong choice, I asked, "How will I know which ones to pick?"

"Hold them up and imagine them on me," she said. "If you smile, put them back."

Once my divorce was final, I went to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and asked to have my maiden name reinstated on my driver's license. "Will there be any change of address?" the clerk inquired. "No," I replied.

"Oh, good," she said, clearly delighted. "You got the house."

As we left the gym after our first real workout in years, my husband and I both felt energized. "Let's renew our commitment to do it three times a week," I said.

"Absolutely," my husband agreed, "three times as a minimum."

"And no whining," I said. "No excuses."

"No, we'll do it with energy and enthusiasm."

"And on my late night, we can just meet here at the gym."

"The gym?" my husband said, crestfallen. "I thought we were talking about sex!"

Hoping to lose some weight, my wife told me she wanted to get an exercise bicycle. I reminded her that she had a very nice and rather expensive bike in the garage. She explained that she wanted a stationary one.

"Your bicycle has been stationary," I remarked. "That's why you need to lose ten pounds."

 

 

A member of a diet club bemoaned her lack of will-power. She'd made her family's favorite cake over the weekend, she explained, and they'd eaten half of it. The next day, however, the uneaten half beckoned. She cut herself a slice. Then another, and another. By the time she'd polished off the cake, she knew her husband would be disappointed.

"What did he say when he found out?" one club member asked.

"He never found out," she said. "I made another cake and ate half."

A friend and her husband were participating in a blood drive, and as part of the prescreening process, an elderly volunteer was asking some questions. "Have you ever paid for sex?" the woman asked my friend's husband sweetly.

Glancing wearily over at his wife, trying to calm a new baby and tend to several other children milling around her, he sighed, "Every time."

After ten years of widowhood, I remarried. Leaving work one wintry evening, I told a colleague that it was very gratifying to once again have someone worry about me if the roads were icy. My new husband would be awaiting my arrival, I said, and would hurry out to meet me at the car.

I couldn't have been more right. As I pulled into the driveway, my husband burst out the door and came up to me. Rubbing our new car, he anxiously queried, "Did you get salt on it?"

 

 

My husband bought an exercise machine to help him shed a few pounds. He set it up in the basement but didn't use it much, so he moved it to the bedroom. It gathered dust there, too, so he put it in the living room. Weeks later I asked how it was going. "I was right," he said. "I do get more exercise now. Every time I close the drapes, I have to walk around the machine."

I was in my ninth month of pregnancy and feeling very uncomfortable. On top of everything, my pleas for sympathy seemed to go unnoticed by my husband.

One day I told him, "I hope in your next life you get to be pregnant!"

He replied, "I hope in your next life you get to be married to someone who's pregnant!"

 

 

Although I was only a few pounds overweight, my wife was harping on me to diet. One evening we took a brisk walk downtown, and I surprised her by jumping over a parking meter, leapfrog style.

Pleased with myself, I said, "How many fat men do you know who can do that?"

"One," she retorted.

 

 

At the airport check-in counter, I overheard a woman ask for window seats for her and her husband. The clerk pointed out that this would prevent them from sitting together.

"Sweetie," the woman replied. "I just spent ten days of quality time in a compact rental car with this man. I know what I'm requesting."

In Nevada, my husband and I attended the wedding of a man and woman of different faiths. A Protestant minister and a Catholic priest performed an ecumenical marriage ceremony. In unison they proclaimed the couple husband and wife.

Afterward, a man was overheard congratulating the father of the bride. “Fifty years ago this could not have happened.”

“No,” replied the father. “Religion has come a long way.”

“Religion! Who’s talking about religion? I mean a cattleman’s daughter marrying a sheepman’s son.”

 

 

While at a marine-supply store stocking up on equipment for my boat, I also purchased an inflatable life preserver. "It was my wife's idea," I explained to the grizzled salesman at the counter. "She's buying it for me as a gift."

"Lucky you," he said as he started to write up the order. "My wife got me a length of chain and a cement block."

 

 

I think my wife's going deaf," Joe told their doctor.

"Try to test her hearing at home and let me know how severe her problem is before you bring her in for treatment," the doctor said.

So that evening, when his wife was preparing dinner, Joe stood 15 feet behind her and said, "What's for dinner, honey?"

No response.

He moved to ten feet behind her and asked again.

No response.

Then he stood five feet in back of her and tried again but still got no answer. Finally, he stood directly behind her and asked, "Honey, what's for supper?"

She turned around. "For the fourth time—I said chicken!"

A hairdressing client of mine told me of her husband's recovery after having double bypass heart surgery. She had recounted the doctor's orders to her husband, saying, "In six weeks you'll be able to walk up two flights of stairs, lift 20 pounds, and you can resume normal sexual activity."

Her husband responded, "If I'd known about the sex, I would've had the surgery a long time ago!"

 

 

After my husband and I had a huge argument, we ended up not talking to each other for days. Finally, on the third day, he asked where one of his shirts was. "Oh," I said, "now you're speaking to me."

He looked confused. 'What are you talking about?"

"Haven't you noticed I haven't spoken to you for three days?" I challenged.

"No," he said. "I just thought we were getting along."

I realized that the ups and downs of the stock market had become too big a part of our life one night as my husband and I prepared for bed. As we slid beneath the covers, I snuggled up to him and told him I loved him.

Drifting off to sleep, he drowsily whispered back, "Your dividend growth fund went up three days this week."

 

 

After the birth of my son, a woman from the records department stopped by my hospital room to get information for his birth certificate. "Father's date of birth?" she asked. When I told her, she said, "Do you realize that his birthday is exactly nine months before your son's birth?"

"No, I hadn't thought about it," I responded, "but now that you mention it, I have a daughter who turned two a couple days before the same date."

After she finished taking down all the data, she patted my hand and said, "Maybe you should start buying your husband a tie for his birthday."

One morning a customer entered my flower shop and ordered a bouquet for his wife. "No card is necessary," he instructed us. "She'll know who sent them."

The delivery truck hadn't even returned to the store when the phone rang. It was the customer's wife. "Who sent the flowers?" she asked.

After explaining that the customer had requested that no card be included, I considered the matter closed—but not so. A bit later, she came rushing in the front door. "You've got to tell me who sent the flowers," she demanded, "before my husband gets home."

 

 

My mother, a meticulous housekeeper, often lectured my father about tracking dirt into the house. One day he came in to find her furiously scrubbing away at a spot on the floor and launching into a lecture. "I don't know what you've brought in," she said, "but I can't seem to get this out."

He studied the situation for a moment and, without a word, moved a figurine on the window-sill where the sun was streaming in. The spot immediately disappeared.

My husband, Mike, and I had several stressful months of financial difficulties. So one evening I was touched to see him gazing at the diamond wedding ring that symbolized our marriage.

"With this ring…" I began romantically.

"We could pay off Visa," he responded.

My husband is a big Atlanta Braves fan. When I saw an ad on television for a baseball autographed by one of his favorite players that cost $42, I rushed out and bought it for him as a gift.

That evening as we were watching television, the same commercial came on. Slyly I glanced over at my husband just as he commented, "What kind of idiot would pay $42 for a baseball?"

 

 

My sister went shopping for blue jeans with her husband, Steve. She chose a few pairs to try on and went into the fitting room, while Steve waited outside. A minute later he heard her crying softly. Concerned, Steve said through the door, "Honey, really, it doesn't matter if you've gone up a size or two."

Soon she came out, limping slightly and pretty upset. The problem wasn't the size of her pants; she had stubbed her toe in the dressing room.

While in the checkout line at my local hardware store I overheard one man say to another, "My wife has been after me to paint our shed. But I let it go for so long she got mad and did it herself."

His friend nodded. "I like women who get mad like that."

When my younger brother and his wife celebrated their first anniversary, they invited the rest of the family to join them for dinner. The conversation focused on the newlyweds and how they happened to meet. Caught up in the romance of the story, one by one the men related how we had met our wives. Eventually everyone had told his story except for my youngest brother.

All eyes were on him when he said, "Oh, Cindy and I met in college. We were matched up by a computer according to compatibility."

"That's the whole story?" my wife asked incredulously.

"Oh, no," he replied with a grin. "They've fixed the computer since then."

My wife-to-be and I were at the county clerk's office for our marriage license. After recording the vital information—names, dates of birth, etc.— the clerk handed me our license and deadpanned, "No refunds, no exchanges, no warranties."

After his marriage broke up, my manager became very philosophical. "I guess it was in our stars," he sighed.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Her astrological sign is the one for earth. Mine is the one for water. Together we made mud."

 

 

Both my fiancé and I are in our 40s. I thought it was both amusing and touching when he assumed the classic position to propose to me—down on one bended knee.

"Are you serious?" I asked, laughing.

"Of course I'm serious," he said. "I'm on my bad knee."

When a woman in my office became engaged, a colleague offered her some advice. "The first ten years are the hardest," she said.

"How long have you been married?" I asked.

"Ten years," she replied.

 

 

My wife and I get along just great—except she's a back-seat driver second to none. On my way home from work one day, my cell phone rang as I merged onto a freeway bypass. It was my wife. By chance, she had entered the bypass right behind me.

"Honey," she said, "your turn signal is still on. And put your lights on—it's starting to rain."

 

 

As I stripped off my sweatshirt at the breakfast table one warm morning, my T-shirt started to come off too.

My husband let out a low whistle. I took it as a compliment until he said, from behind his newspaper, "Can you believe the price of bananas?"

A man and his wife were taking an afternoon drive through the countryside. They had just had a big argument and were not talking to one another. Finally the husband decided to break the silence and say something sarcastic to his wife: “Look at all the cows and pigs in the pasture. Don’t they remind you of your relatives?”

The wife replied, “Yes, they do. They remind me of my in-laws.”

Though I have always been a sound sleeper, I am frequently up at 4 a.m. This is around the time that my husband, Ed, having woken up at 3, will generally crawl back into bed. Ed goes downstairs to watch TV so that his tossing and turning doesn't wake me up. This is very considerate, except that when he returns, he likes to chat about what he's been watching. The other night, Ed had been watching an infomercial for something called the Steam Shark. I have a distinct memory of surfacing from the depths of sleep directly into the sentence "You can steam-clean around the base of the toilet." Last night it was "Honey, Bo Schembechler died." Schembechler, Ed explained to my inert self, was a beloved University of Michigan football coach. There is little difference between talking to me about college football when I'm asleep and talking to me about it when I'm awake. Eyelid position, basically, is the difference. Ed kept going: "He was the voice of the Wolverines." I was partly awake at this point, and for some reason, the sentence struck me as the funniest thing I'd heard in a very long time. Different rules apply between the hours of 2 and 4 a.m., I find. Things that would ordinarily not even qualify as mildly amusing will often, at 3 a.m., strike the ear as high comedy. Worries are similarly warped. I recently spent the hour from 4 to 5 a.m. worrying about the placement of two shrubs we had planted in our yard that day. Ed came in from downstairs, and I unloaded my fears about the overly close positioning of the shrubbery. I made him promise that first thing the next day, we would dig one up and move it, lest they crowd each other's roots. In the morning, we went out to look at the plants. If anything, they looked a little lonesome there at 17 inches apart, just as the label had recommended. I am now known far and wide as the Nervous Gardener. Anyway, once the laughter sets in, we're both up. The topic of wolverines led to savage animals in general, and from there to a game called African Veldt. We frequently make up mindless games to wile away the time until the sandman agrees to take over the proceedings again. "First person to run out of animals is the loser," I said. Ed pointed out that since I had been to Africa, the game was rigged in my favor. He made me name three animals for every one of his. "Fine. Leopard, zebra, elephant." "Lion," said Ed with great confidence. "Warthog, wildebeest, springbok." A long time went by. The shrubbery roots were closing in upon each other. Finally, and with great hesitancy, Ed said, "Giraffe?" "Eland, gnu, ostrich." "You can't do birds." "Birds are animals." "Okay, ant," said Ed, and then he rolled over. He took his bottom pillow and put it on top of his head. This is known as the Ed sandwich: pillow, Ed's head, pillow. He does this because he can't sleep if there's noise in the room. There isn't now, but there will be. I make noises while I sleep, and Ed has had many hours to devote to cataloging them. Common varietals include the Click, the Tommy gun and the Darth Vader. Light is also a problem for my husband. There can be no light in the bedroom, not even the light from the digital clock, which is hidden away on the bottom shelf of Ed's nightstand, broadcasting the time to toddlers and gnomes. The room across the hall must also be dark. We can't just close our bedroom door to block the light from that room, because this will make the bedroom too stuffy for Ed to sleep. That room must also have its curtains drawn. If he could, Ed would draw the curtains on the windows of our neighbors across the driveway, and on down the street, all the way to the horizon.