Whether you’ve been dating two weeks and are wondering if your newfound bae has what it takes to go all the way or you’re staring down the gun-barrel of impending matrimony, you may be interested to know that there are clear signs your relationship is destined to last.
At least that’s the consensus amongst the wedding photographers of the 22.2 million strong AskReddit community. In fact, just this morning the question: “Marriage/engagement photographers/videographers of Reddit, have you developed a sixth sense for which marriages will flourish and which will not? What are the green and red flags?”, was posed, with highly illuminating responses.
Of the 4.7k comments, the one with most likes (i.e. the one that resonated most with people) pointed to a rather unusual facet of a couple’s behaviour that shows if they are compatible in the long run: how they handle baked goods.
“Photographer here. I swear that all of the couples that have split up have smashed the cake in their SOs face. None of the nice cake couples have. Just my weird anecdotal experience. Maybe it’s a sign of respect for each other.”
But before you write this off as a “random American ritual”, other photographers backed this claim up, providing some quite interesting psychological analysis of newlyweds’ ability to feed each other dessert.
“Sometimes one of them (usually the groom) will force cake all over the others face and embarrass and upset them. I’ve seen this happen a handful of times and all of those relationships that I have kept up with have ended in a divorce.”
The investigation then went deeper, with another shutterbug offering that—in his experience—the important thing is not whether or not couples smash: it’s whether or not they are in sync with each other’s desires: “Couples that have fun with it seem fine. But the blatant smash in the unsuspecting other seems to derail a happy person’s special day.”
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Another added: “The biggest sign is the cake cutting. Some people like to smear the cake everywhere as a joke, some people don’t. Usually the couple is in sync about this. They know what the other would like and they don’t smush cake on the others face if they wouldn’t want that.”
Oh, and some unfortunate divorcee’s threw their two cents in the mix too: “At my wedding, my husband KNEW not to do this… Guess what he does when we’re cutting the cake…yup…I was FURIOUS. We lasted 2 years and he’s now my ex-husband. So I can definitely attest to the accuracy of this.”
The conclusion? As one sage commenter muses: “It’s just a small thing which displays whether he (or she’s) empathetic, caring, and respects boundaries. Violating your wishes on that respect shows (they’re) none of those, because (they) didn’t stop to think about how it would make you feel.”
“He (an unwanted-cake smashing husband) is either clueless about the fact other people have feelings to start with, or he cares about other things e.g. getting a laugh more than he does about upsetting you, so I would expect these problems to have come up in other areas of the relationship.”
To boot: “I also think ‘little’ or subtle boundary encroachments like this are extremely telling because they tell you that a person has poor respect for boundaries in general and will usually push every kind of boundary they can eventually just because it irks them that other people have them,” the same commenter added.
So if you are engaged to someone who does not respect your boundaries (or who cares more about getting a cheap laugh than hurting your feelings), be warned…