As a new bride, Aunt Edna moved into the small home on her husband's ranch near Snowflake. She put a shoe box on a shelf in her closet and asked her husband never to touch it.

For 50 years Uncle Jack left the box alone, until Aunt Edna was old and dying.

One day when he was putting their affairs in order, he found the box again and thought it might hold something important.

Opening it, he found two doilies and $82,500 in cash. He took the box to her and asked about the contents. "My mother gave me that box the day we married," she explained. "She told me to make a doily to help ease my frustrations every time I got mad at you."

Uncle Jack was very touched that in 50 years she'd only been mad at him twice.

"What's the $82,500 for?" he asked.

"Oh, well that's the money I've made selling the doilies."

Well, it sounds more like a joke than a true story, but I think it's a good idea for married couples to have a way to get out frustration.

There was an anecdote like that in the "Catholic Marriage Manual" (a very famous and highly recommended book)

In that anecdote, it was the husband who had a habit of going for a walk whenever he was angry, so he wouldn't say anything he would regret to his wife. At the end of his life, he said something like, "I became very familiar with the neighborhood" or some such. Basically, the same ending as the joke above.

Matthew