What’s in the box? No, we’re not talking about the climatic final scene from “Se7en” with Brad Pitt. This one ends with a surprise you’re all going to want to hear about.
As Huffington Post reported, Michigan couple Kathy and Brandon Gunn were married nine years ago. All of their other wedding gifts had been opened and put to good use. But one mysterious gift remained unopened — a package from Kathy’s Aunt Alison, with a note requesting “Do not open until your first disagreement.”
“Now, there had obviously been plenty of disagreements, arguments and slammed doors throughout our 9 years,” Kathy wrote in a Facebook post that has since gone viral. “There were even a couple of instances where we both considered giving up … but we never opened the box.”
As Kathy explains in her post, she and Brandon used the mysterious gift as a test of sorts, agreeing to not open it for fear their marriage would be seen as some sort of failure. In other words, if they could work through any disagreements of challenges that came up, then the present would remain unopened.
After reminiscing about past wedding gifts one night, the couple decided it was finally time to let the mystery be solved. What they found inside was an adorable recipe that pretty much any of us could use to help simmer down a stewing conflict.
The present contained two notes — one to Kathy and the other to Brandon. Also packed inside was some cash, bath products, wine glasses, and a flower vase. Kathy’s note told her to use the cash to pick up a pizza and prep a bath while Brandon’s told him to use his share of the cash to get a bottle of wine (hence the glasses) and flowers for Kathy.
The couple had wondered if what was inside the box would offer the solution to all of their marital challenges. But instead, what they found was some common sense kindness from an aunt who at the time had already been married to her husband for nearly 50 years. As Kathy later wrote on Facebook:
“All along, we assumed that the contents of that box held the key to saving a marriage — an age old trick — unbeknownst to us rookies. After all, my Great Aunt and Uncle had been married for nearly half a century. So, we thought the box would save ‘us’ — and in a way it did. That box went beyond what I believe my Great Aunt had intended. It was by far the greatest wedding gift of all.”
Thankfully, the rest of us don’t have to wait until after nine years of marriage to put Aunt Alison’s secret solution into play.
