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1. Keep the TV cameras out of your house: it's very difficult to establish yourselves as a married couple as it is, especially if you've never lived with anyone or been married before. Adding TV cameras can only make that process much more difficult, if not impossible.

2. Don't get married too young. Jessica was quite young and naive when they got married. In addition, she had never had a serious relationship with anyone other than Nick, and had never had sex before. I'm not saying you should have sex first before marriage, just that it seems like once she had sex she seemed to go overboard. Rumors were that cheated on Nick on several occasions with people like Adam Levine of Maroon 5, and various members of the Jackass cast.

3. Don't cheat on your spouse, especially if you're famous and have paparazzi following you around. Jessica was known to visit various men's hotel rooms while away from Nick and was seen nuzzling up and flirting with various men. Rumors on the "Dukes of Hazzard" set were that she and Johnny Knoxville were so friendly and close with each other that everyone assumed they were sleeping together.

4. Don't marry someone who has below average intelligence and no real world experience. Maybe it was all an act, but Jessica was very naive and didn't know much about real world things. I saw one show where she and Nick went to Home Depot and she behaved as if they'd just landed on Mars. She couldn't believe that people would actually go to a store to buy things such as replacement string for a weed whacker. I'm sure we all know by now that she thought "chicken of the sea" tuna was really chicken and that buffalo wings were made from buffalo meat.
Nick was much smarter than her, and had a lot more real world experience in addition to being older than her.

5. Don't let your parents run your life. Rumors are that Joe Simpson, who manages both Ashley and Jessica Simpson's careers, runs their personal lives as well. In fact some people say that he was the one who had the idea for her to marry Nick and he was the one who had the idea for her to divorce Nick. (Even though she most likely was cheating on him.)

6. Don't let your friends move in with you. When you're a newlywed, it's hard enough to get used to living together and the routine of married life. Letting one of your friends move in for an unspecified amount of time is not a good idea. Jessica let one of her friends live with them, with no set plan of when the friend would be expected to get her own place. So not only did they have cameras following them to interrupt their privacy, they had an extra person there all the time.

7. Don't redecorate the house without consulting your spouse. If your spouse says they don't want you to redecorate the house or redo the yard, don't do it! Decisions like that should be made together. Every time Jessica would go out of town, Nick would get a bunch of his friends over and redecorate a room of their house or would redo their lawn.
Doing things like this behind your spouse's back destroys trust and makes the other person feel unimportant.

Chances are that most people aren't going to have the same problems that two celebrities with TV cameras and manager fathers hanging around have had, but I think that there are some good lessons to be learned from these two about what not to do.

Learn more about this author, Helen Richardson.
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