Marriage Jokes

Overheard at my garden-club meeting: "I never knew what compost was until I met my husband."

I identify with football players because I know what it's like to spend your whole life training for a large, jewel-encrusted ring.

Even though there was a blizzard raging outside, I made it the half-mile to the bakery, where I asked the owner for six rolls. "Your wife must like rolls," he said. "How do you know these are for my wife?" I asked. "Because your mother wouldn't send you out in weather like this."

A man tells his doctor that he’s incapable of doing all the things around the house that he used to do. When the examination is over, he says, “Okay, Doctor. In plain English—what’s wrong with me?” “Well, in plain English,” says the doctor, “you’re just lazy.” The man nods. “Now give me the medical term so I can tell my wife.”

For a romantic touch, I washed our sheets with lavender-scented detergent. When my husband got into bed, he sniffed. "What's this?" he asked.

"Guess," I said coyly.

"I have no idea," he said. "It smells like the stuff you use to line the hamster's cage."

 

Shortly before our 25th wedding anniversary, my husband sent 25 long-stemmed yellow roses to me at my office. A few days later, I plucked all the petals and dried them. On the night of our anniversary, I spread the petals over the bed and lay on top of them, wearing only a negligee.

As I'd hoped, I got a reaction from my husband.

When he saw me, he shouted, "Are those potato chips?"

After we had lunch with another couple, the women went shopping, and the men opted to go sailing. Bad decision—a storm blew in while we men were out on the water.

Making matters worse, the tide had gone out, grounding the boat. We had to climb overboard and shove it back into deep water.

As my friend stood there—ankles deep in muck, muscles straining against the weight of the boat, and rain pelting his face—he grinned broadly and with unmistakable sincerity said, "Sure beats shopping!"

It may have been the most romantic statement ever uttered in our courthouse. In between hearings, a wedding was performed. As the newlyweds left the courtroom, the bride nestled up to the groom and cooed, "Isn't it nice to be here when we're not being convicted of something?"

After Adam stayed out late a few nights, Eve became suspicious.

"You’re running around with another woman— admit it!" she demanded.

"What other woman?" Adam shot back. "You’re it!"

That night, Adam was fast asleep when he was awakened by Eve poking him in the chest.

"What are you doing?"

"Counting your ribs."

A soldier in my National Guard platoon became concerned when the Army insisted that he sign up for direct deposit.

"It’s not going to work for me," he said, panicked.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I use my Guard pay for spending money."

"So?"

"For the past ten years, I’ve been telling my wife that I serve for free!"

On his birthday, my husband was stuck driving our six rambunctious children around. As usual, they were yelling, punching, and annoying one another. Joel finally had had enough.

"Kids," he said over the din, "if you would behave and be kind to each other, that would be a very nice birthday present for me."

Our six-year-old shot back: "Too late, I already got you another present."

I’d noticed that my 60-year-old father seemed to be losing his hearing, so I mentioned it to my mother.

"Things haven’t changed that much," she said. "Only difference is, before, he didn’t listen. Now, he can’t."

Jack wakes up with a horrible hangover and a throbbing black eye. The first thing he sees is a single rose on the side table and a note from his wife: “Dear, breakfast is made. I’ve gone shopping to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you!”

He stumbles to the kitchen and, sure enough, there’s breakfast. “Joe,” he says to his son, “what happened last night?”

“You came home soused and got that black eye tripping over a chair.”

“So, why the rose, breakfast, and sweet note from your mother?”

“Oh, that. Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take off your clothes, you screamed, ‘Leave me alone, I’m married!’”

As I performed a simple medical procedure on my patient, I warned her, "After this, you can't have sex for at least three days."

"Did you hear that?" she asked her husband. "No sex for three days."

"I heard," he said. "But she was speaking to you."

Scene: My checkout line at the supermarket.

Me: Paper or plastic?

Customer: I'd like double-bagged paper, and I'd like you to make each bag as heavy as possible.

Me: Okay.

Customer: In case you're wondering, I had a fight with my wife, and it's my turn to pick up the groceries.

Me: Uh-huh.

Customer: It's also her turn to unload the car.

One friend complained to another, "All my husband and I do anymore is fight. I've been so upset, I've lost 20 pounds."

"If it's that bad, why don't you just leave him?" asked the second friend.

"I'd like to lose another 15 pounds first."

I was a mess. My career as an artist was going nowhere, my horseback riding was no longer fulfilling, and in general I felt unattractive. My husband did his best to be supportive: "You're a great artist," "You're a wonderful equestrian," "You're the most beautiful woman I know."

One day, after another bad ride, I told him my horse seemed depressed. "How do I cheer up a horse?" I asked.

He shared his secret: "Tell her she's good at stuff and that she looks beautiful."

While doing a crossword puzzle, I asked for my husband's help.

"The word is eight letters long and starts with m, and the clue is 'tiresome sameness.'"

"Monogamy," he answered.

A customer at a coffee shop was clearly peeved by the text message he'd just received. "You ever have that ex-girlfriend who just won't go away?" he asked his friend.

"Yeah," came the reply. "My wife."

"When I married Donna, I could get both hands around her waist," said my husband's grandfather. Pointing at his full-figured wife, he boasted, "Now look how much I got. That's what I call an investment!"

A fourth marriage meant yet another name change for me. I didn't realize the upheaval it had caused until I asked my father why I hadn't heard from him in a while.

"I forgot your phone number," he said.

"You could've looked it up in the phone book."

"I didn't know what name to look under."

Q: How many divorced men does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Who cares? They never get the house anyway.

Every night, Harry goes out drinking. And every night, his wife, Louise, yells at him. One day, one of Louise's friends suggests that she try a different tack. "Welcome him home with a kiss and some loving words," she says. "He might change his ways."

That night, Harry stumbles back home as usual. But instead of berating him, Louise helps him into an easy chair, puts his feet up on the ottoman, removes his shoes, and gently massages his neck.

"It's late," she whispers. "I think we should go upstairs to bed now, don't you?"

"Might as well," says Harry. "I'll get in trouble if I go home."

My husband and I attended a bridal fair trying to drum up work for his fledgling wedding photography business. One vendor assumed we were engaged and asked when the big day was.

"Oh, we've been married ten years," I said.

"Really?" she asked. "But you look so happy."

As I picked out flowers for my mother, I noticed a man next to me juggling three boxes of candy and a large bouquet.

"What did you do wrong?" I said with a laugh.

He mumbled back, "I got married."

Suspecting he had a serious medical condition, I nagged my husband until he agreed to see a doctor. Once there, he was handed a mountain of forms to fill out. Next to "Reason for visit?" he wrote, "My wife made me."

My grandmother told me how she ended up marrying Grandpa. She was in her 20s, and the man she was dating left for war. "We were in love," she recalled, "and wrote to each other every week. It was during that time that I discovered how wonderful your grandfather was."

"Did you marry Grandpa when he came home from the war?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't marry the man who wrote the letters. Your grandfather was the mailman."

A wife is scrambling eggs when her husband bursts into the kitchen.

"Careful," he cries. "Careful! You're cooking too many at once. Too many! Scramble them! Now! We need more butter. They're going to stick! Careful! Now scramble them again! Hurry up! Are you crazy? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. Use the salt! The salt!"

The wife turns and asks, "What is wrong with you?"

Her husband calmly replies, "I wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving."

As my sister relaxed on the couch, her head comfortably leaning against the crook of her husband's arm, her cell phone beeped. It was a text message from her husband: "Move."

It took me forever to wake up one of my nursing home patients. But after much poking, prodding, and wrangling, he finally sat up and fixed his twinkling blue eyes on my face. "My, you're pretty!" he said. "Have I asked you to marry me yet?"

"No, you haven't," I gushed.

"Good. Because I couldn't put up with this every morning."

When my petite mother found her seat on the airplane, she was crushed between my 200-plus-pound father and another large man.

"I bet you wish you'd married a smaller man," my father said.

My mother mumbled, "I did."

Clearly, my husband and I need to brush up on our flirting. The other night, after I crawled into bed next to him, he wrapped his large arms around me, drew a deep breath, and whispered, "Mmm … that Vicks smells good."

I returned home from my ninth business trip of the year with a severe bout of jet lag–induced foot-in-mouth disease. As we prepared to go to sleep that night, I wrapped my arms around my better half, gave her a kiss, and announced, "It's good to be in my own bed, with my own wife!"

Scene: A conversation between two of my friends.

Friend #1: Are you visiting us tomorrow? Do you need directions?

Friend #2: I'm all set. I have the address, a GPS, and a GPS override.

Friend #1: What's a GPS override?

Friend #2: My wife.

Before leaving for Officer Candidates School, I half-jokingly mentioned to my family that I was going to learn how to eat, sleep, shower, and shave all over again. My brother, in the throes of planning his wedding, muttered, "Me too."

I turned to my father one night and said, "It's amazing—50 years and you never once had an affair. How do you account for that?" He replied, "I can't drive."

My friend was at the beauty parlor when she overheard another woman rattle on to the manicurist about the sad state of her marriage. "Things have gotten so bad," she said, "I think I might ask for a divorce. What do you think?"

"That's a serious matter," came the reply. "I think you should consult another manicurist."

I was leafing through one of my hunting catalogs when I found something that made me laugh. "Look," I said to my wife. "What I've always wanted: a camouflage toilet seat."

"Get it," she said. "Then you'll have an excuse for when you miss."

The burial service for the elderly woman climaxed with a massive clap of thunder, followed by a bolt of lightning, accompanied by even more thunder. "Well," said her husband to the shaken pastor when it ended, "she's there."

My husband is a car nut. That's why I could appreciate the card he gave me on our fifth wedding anniversary. It read "The last 72,000 miles of my life have been the best ever!"

My granddaughter asked why I called my husband Hon.

"It's a term of endearment," I explained.

My husband mumbled, "After more than 40 years, it's a term of endurement."

Last June, my friend told me about her plans for our upcoming prom. "I'm renting a stretch limo and spending $1,000 on a new dress, and I've reserved a table at the most expensive restaurant in town," she said.

Our teacher overheard her and shook her head. "I didn't spend that much on my wedding."

My friend answered, "I can have three or four weddings. But a prom you do only once."

An item on craigslist: "Antique sewing table refinished by my wife, $30. If she's home, $100."

Halfway through a romantic dinner, my husband smiled and said, "You look so beautiful under these lights." I was falling in love all over again when he added, "We gotta get some of these lights."

The wheel of my grocery cart was making a horrible scraping sound as I rolled it through the supermarket. Nevertheless, when I finished my shopping and saw a cartless woman, I offered it up, explaining, "It makes an awful noise, but it works."

"That's okay," she said, taking it. "I have a husband at home like that."

How come married women are heavier than single women?

A single woman goes home, sees what's in the fridge, and goes to bed. A married woman sees what's in bed and goes to the fridge.

When I asked a friend the secret to his 52 years of marriage, he replied, "We never go to sleep angry."

"That's a great philosophy," I noted.

"Yes. And the longest we've been awake so far is five days."

'If I were to die first, would you remarry?" the wife asks.

"Well," says the husband, "I'm in good health, so why not?"

"Would she live in my house?"

"It's all paid up, so yes."

"Would she drive my car?"

"It's new, so yes."

"Would she use my golf clubs?"

"No. She's left-handed."

When my husband pointed out my tendency to retell the same stories over and over, I reminded him that he was just as guilty.

"Allow me to clarify," he said in response. "I review. You repeat."

En route to Atlanta, my stepfather spotted some mules by the side of the road. "Relatives?" he asked my mother.

Not taking the bait, she responded, "Yeah, through marriage."

Feeling listless, I bought some expensive "brain-stimulating" pills at the health food store. But it wasn't until I got home that I read the label.

"This is just rosemary extract," I complained to my husband. "I can't believe I spent all that money for something that I have growing like wild in the yard!"

"See?" he said. "You're smarter already."

Following a funeral service, the pallbearers are carrying the casket out of the church when they accidentally bump into a wall. From inside the coffin they hear a faint moan. Opening the lid, they find the man inside alive! He leaps out, performs a little jig, and lives another ten years before eventually keeling over.

Once again, a ceremony is conducted, and at the end, the pallbearers carry out the casket. As they head toward the doors of the church, the wife of the deceased leaps to her feet and shouts, "Watch the wall!"

I was cleaning a hotel room when the previous occupant came in, looking for her husband's keys. We searched high and low without luck. I finally peeked underneath the bed closest to the wall.

"Don't bother—that was my bed," she said. "He wouldn't have gone anywhere near it."

There are women whose thoughtful husbands buy them flowers for no reason. And then there's me. One day I couldn't stand it any longer. "Why don't you ever bring me flowers?" I asked.

"What's the point?" my husband said. "They die after about a week."

"So could you," I shot back, "but I still like having you around."

My cell phone quit as I tried to let my wife know that I was caught in freeway gridlock and would be late for our anniversary dinner. I wrote a message on my laptop asking other motorists to call her, printed it on a portable inkjet and taped it to my rear windshield.

When I finally arrived home, my wife gave me the longest kiss ever. "I really think you love me," she said. "At least 70 people called and told me so."

 

My wife and I were having a very hypothetical discussion: In the unlikely event that Hollywood made a movie based on our lives, we wondered what stars would play us.

"Who would you pick to portray you?" she asked me.

I thought about it for a minute, then answered, "Dennis Quaid."

"In that case," she said, "I'll play myself."

 

An elderly couple had been shopping at a grocery store, and the wife decided to steal a can of peaches. The inevitable happened and she was caught. Upon her court date, the judge asked her what she had stolen.

"Your Honor, I stole a can of peaches."

The judge replied, "How many peaches were in the can?"

She said, "Six."

The judge then said, "I will sentence you to six days in jail."

Her husband stood up behind her and replied, "Your Honor, she also stole a can of peas."

 

 

 

When we finished a personality assessment at work, I asked my friend Dan if he would share the results with his wife. "That would require me to go home and say, 'Hi, honey. I just paid someone $400 to tell me what's wrong with me,' " he said. "And based on that, considering we've been married 23 years, she'd hand me a bill for $798,000."

On the first day of our marriage retreat, the instructor talked about the importance of knowing what matters to each other.

"For example," he began, pointing to my husband, David, "do you know your wife's favorite flower?"

David answered, "Pillsbury All Purpose."

 

Though the vocabulary words we were learning in my second-grade class sort of sounded the same, they had very different meanings.

This concept was not lost on one bright boy who knew what those differences were:

"When people marry more than once, it's called polygamy. But when people marry only once, it's called monotony."

My husband and I had been trying to have a third child for a while. Unfortunately, the day I was to take a home pregnancy test, he was called out of town on business. I had told our young daughters about the test, and they were excited. We decided if it was positive, we would buy a baby outfit to surprise their father when he got home. The three of us stood in the bathroom eagerly waiting for the telltale line to appear.

When it did not, my thoughtful seven-year-old gave me a hug. "It's okay, Mom," she said. "The next time Daddy goes out of town, you can try and get pregnant again."

A man rushed to the jewelry counter in the store where I work soon after the doors opened one morning and said he needed a pair of diamond earrings. I showed him a wide selection, and quickly he picked out a pair.

When I asked him if he wanted the earrings gift-wrapped, he said, "That'd be great. But can you make it quick? I forgot today was my anniversary, and my wife thinks I'm taking out the trash."

 

 

For our honeymoon my fiancée and I chose a fashionable hotel known for its luxurious suites. When I called to make reservations, the desk clerk inquired, "Is this for a special occasion?"

"Yes," I replied. "It's our honeymoon."

"And how many adults will there be?" she asked.

Nancy was Catholic, but her fiancé, Chris, was not. Since my friends were planning to be married in the Catholic Church, Chris made sure to listen carefully throughout their prenuptial sessions. At one meeting the priest turned to Chris and told him, "Since you are not Catholic, we shall have the ceremony without Eucharist."

Later that day, Chris was noticeably upset, so Nancy asked what was wrong. "I don't understand," he said. "How can we have the ceremony without me?"

One of my customers at the department of motor vehicles wanted a personalized license plate with his wedding anniversary on it. As we completed the paperwork he explained, "This way I can't forget the date."

A few hours later, I recognized the same young man waiting in my line. When his turn came, he said somewhat sheepishly, "I need to change the numbers on that plate application."

 

 

One night when I dropped in at the police station on my news beat, a large, efficient-looking woman in uniform who packed a service revolver at her waist was behind the sergeant's desk. After checking the blotter, I returned to the car, where my wife was waiting for me.

"You should see the new woman on the force," I said. "She's tremendous, and wearing a .38."

I didn't notice the silence until my wife broke it icily with, "I wear a 38."

Two convicts are working on a chain gang. "I heard the warden's daughter up and married a guy down on cellblock D," the first con says to the other. "The warden's mighty upset about it too."

"Why?" asks the second prisoner. "Because she married a con?"

"No. Because they eloped."

 

 

At a clearance sale, the wife of a federal district-court judge found the perfect green tie to match one of her husband's sport jackets. Soon after, while the couple was relaxing at a resort complex to get his mind off a complicated cocaine-conspiracy case, he noticed a small, round disc sewn into the tie. The judge showed it to a local FBI agent, who was equally suspicious that it might be a "bug" planted by the conspiracy defendants.

The agent sent the device to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., for analysis. Two weeks later, the judge phoned Washington to find out the results of their tests.

"We're not sure where the disc came from," the FBI told him, "but we discovered that when you press it, it plays 'Jingle Bells.' "

Any time the alarm goes off after-hours at the municipal office where I work, the security company calls me at home and I have to go back and reset it. Late at night I got one of those calls. As I was getting ready to head out the door, my husband groggily said, "You're not going down there by yourself at this hour."

Just as I was thinking, How thoughtful of him, he added, "Better take the dog with you."

 

 

The lawyer I work for specializes in divorce cases, so I was a little surprised to get a call from a prisoner serving life for murdering his wife. My boss was surprised too.

"What does he need me for?" he asked. "He appears to have solved all his marital problems by himself."