It's tough to listen to your elders when you are young and in love, or in lust, and about to be married. But the collective wisdom from the 200 long-married women I interviewed for my new book The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married can help you navigate the toughest journey of all: living with one partner, under one roof, until death do you part.
While all have been married from 15 to 70 years, their voices come from diverse backgrounds and experiences -- they are rich and poor, and originate from many cultures and religions. Yet their shared ability to build enduring marriages boils down to some common and unifying traits. Here is the distillation of their secrets and strategies, including mine from 23 years as a wife, on what it really takes to make a marriage last.
1. Know That Happily-Ever-After Is A Myth:
Lower your expectations; it's dangerous fantasy to think marriage really means you get to be happy forever. Expecting perfection in a marriage or a mate is a fast ticket to divorce. Listen to the longtime wives on this point: The happiest women have a clear sense of purpose and passion outside of their relationships. We realize that a marriage that runs on multiple tracks makes for a more satisfied spouse who gets to have it both ways -- a committed marriage and personal adventures in uncharted territory. Marital bliss is possible if each partner is blissful without the other.
2. Don't compare your marriage to anyone else's:
It's your relationship, not your sister's, not your mother's, and there is no gold standard marriage. Everyone has issues, problems, and most importantly, their own secrets. Your girlfriend who is always calling her husband "sweetie" and sits with her legs twined with his may be flinging dishes at him when no one is around. So don't worry that your marriage isn't measuring up. Because no one knows what's really going on in a marriage except the two people in it. That gives each of us the freedom to write our own rules. One wife of 20 years I spoke to who is married to a devastatingly handsome man turned out to only be having sex once every six months. Her survival secret is the lipstick-sized vibrator she keeps stashed in her purse. Another wife of 37 years exchanges periodic stolen kisses with her college boyfriend that she claims "can go a long way to sustain a long marriage." This isn't a marriage that you or I may want, but, hey, it's her secret, not ours. Who are we to judge?
3. Hang out with outrageous girlfriends and boyfriends -- with boundaries:
The wives with the highest marital satisfaction have a tight circle of wild women friends with whom to drink, travel and vent. Close friendships provide the escape hatch from the inevitable storms that come with living with somebody year-to-year in the grind of ordinary life. Aside from a warm girl circle, platonic friendships are a sexy pick-me-up without the complications of adultery. Women who love the company of men shouldn't have to eliminate men friends from their lives. These extra-marital males who always think we're beautiful and smart (because they don't live with us) definitely make for a perkier wife. So marry someone who is confident and flexible, a man who knows that the more people, male and female, who bolster your self-esteem means there's less work for him!
4. Take Separate Vacations: You like to camp and your husband likes to golf? Spend a month of the summer in the Adirondacks while he goes with his buddies to Scottsdale or better yet, Scotland. Obviously this works better once empty nest hits. After some weeks apart from each other, removed from clashing over bills and in-laws, marriage seems way hotter than the tepid state in which you left each other. Make sure you have the fundamental quality of trust going into a marriage. Trust allows couples to liberate each other to explore their own passions independently. And partners who keep growing as individuals during each phase of a marriage are the ones with the best chance of growing together and staying together.
5. Remember to talk to each other, and to have sex:
In between wifely gallivants and self-exploration, remember to love the guy you're with -- kiss him hello and goodbye, and make time for conversation, no matter how crammed your two-career schedules are. Don't forget to have sex -- sex is really relaxing and fun and can make all your woes go away, at least for eleven minutes or so! Express gratitude to this guy who is giving you something huge: This is the person who can help you build a safe harbor in a world of chaos and uncertainly. He can give you children. After years of having to Spanx every body part in order to impress your dates, your husband is the prince who gave you the freedom to soften at the belly, and to finally relax. The biggest surprise secret I found is how many wives are still enjoying sex after 75 with their mates of 50-plus years!
6. Don't try to win every fight:
Surrender once in a while instead of always having to be right. Couples who stomp off with unresolved conflicts end up holding onto vintage rage, and antique blame that forms toxic wedges over time. Even if you can't forgive and forget, at least let go and move on when snarly brawls and/or plate-throwing erupts behind your own closed doors. Say "I'm sorry", even if you're not sorry one bit. Showing compassion definitely makes spouses behave better. And the ability to bounce back from strife is the real secret that makes marriages last forever.
Iris Krasnow is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. Connect with her on www.iriskrasnow.com
HA
However, I do enjoy it when my husband goes out of town for business for a couple of days, just to have some solitude and connect with myself...
#7. Don't become an alcoholic.
#8. Don't gain a bunch of weight, so as to disgust your partner.
#9. Don't start dating your boyfriends from Alcoholics Anonymous
#10. Don't take out your anger on his car.
They were happily married for 60 years, until he passed away.
You do not have to believe in or worship god to have a happy marriage.
I humbly respect all relationships. However, with regard to discussing them, not knowing the participants of a relationship appears to preclude logical and reasonable analysis of said relationship for the purpose of evaluating HuffPostThinker 10/27/2011 05:56pm. In addition, apparently widely-accepted perspective suggests that limited human capability in discerning human thought appears to further preclude such analysis. Other apparently logic and reason appears to suggest apparent inadvisability of discussing or analyzing parties of close emotional tie.
However, theory regarding relationship appears to be readily available, impersonal and, therefore, easily discussable. Toward that end, I humbly and respectfully submit that the human experience, including human relationships, appears to be based largely upon human perception. This perception appears to center upon the perception of current conditions, of optimal future conditions, and of the best path forward between current and optimal future conditions.
These three apparent categories of human perception appear to also relate to relationships. An apparently reasonable perspective appears to be that these three perception categories apply to long-term through short-term, and critical through mundane relationship-related decisions of either relationship partner. The Bible appears to suggest that:
(a) intimate relationship and leadership by God is the source of optimal human perception,
(b) rejected intimate relationship and leadership by God reduces optimal human perception, and that
(c) the level to which optimal human perception is reduced appears to be reasonably generally expected to (a) reduce the successful outcome of relationship-related decision-making and, therefore, apparently, as a result, to (b) reduce relationship success.
Regarding the relationship between intimate relationship with and leadership by God and successful human relationships, the Bible appears to not suggest that God’s standard for humanity was completely removed from human cognizance when humanity rejected intimate relationship with and leadership by God. The Bible does appear to suggest, however, that human perception of God’s standards was distorted by that rejection.
Consequently, partial adherence to God’s standards might result in a certain measure of success. The Bible appears to suggest, however, that optimal success is a function of optimal intimate relationship with and leadership by God.
I welcome your thoughts.
I humbly and respectfully submit a “lack of authoritative knowledge” caveat and suggest that the following perspective, nonetheless, appears to be appropriately sharable.
The first Biblical report of polygamy appears to refer to Lamech in Genesis 4:19. All other humanity reported to that point – Adam, Eve, and even Cain – appear to have been monogamous, at least to that point.
The Bible appears to suggest that Adam and Eve rejected intimate relationship with and leadership by God via their eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The Bible appears to suggest that human behavior after that development appears to warrant suspicion of a distorted human sense of (a) exploration and of (b) right and wrong. For example, the Bible appears to report that:
(a) Adam and Eve felt a sense of shame (wrong) about their nakedness that God appears to be Biblically-reported to have created as right;
(b) Cain’s sense of right and wrong appears to have contradicted God’s in several ways, including (1) Cain’s choice of sacrifice that God rejected as wrong, (2) Cain’s envy of Abel that God confronted Cain with as being wrong, and (3) Cain’s murder of Abel, apparently because God had accepted Abel’s sacrifice as right; and that
(c) human behavior appears to spiral downhill somewhat relatively quickly.
Consequently, as appears to be the case with many of the human behaviors apparently reported in the Old Testament, even including those of individuals apparently described as exemplary, their being reported appears to not necessarily indicate God’s endorsement of those behaviors. In the “macroscopic” view of the Old Testament and of the entire Bible, even guidelines that appear to regulate, rather than prohibit behaviors such as slavery appear to be reasonably interpreted as one of a series of steps to align (a) a possibly wide-spread, corrupt sense of right and wrong with (b) God’s original standard. An apparently reasonable perspective appears to be that the only Biblical description of God’s original standard for humanity appears to be Genesis chapters 1 and 2, since Genesis chapter 3 appears to begin with the Adam/Eve/tree of knowledge of good and evil incident. In these chapters, monogamy, rather than polygamy appears to be described.
I welcome your thoughts.
It works for some, and what you have works well for you! I'm guessing you're not the only couple that feels like you do.
Just because you're married doesn't mean that you shouldn't quit dating. That would be like taking your partner/spouse for granted and vice-verse. So make a date and keep it. The cost of a babysitter is well spent. This is your time together. No talking about his/her work. No talking about the kids. Just concentrate on the two of you and enjoy yourselves.Go out to a movie and/or dinner. Do things you did together before you tied the knot. Keep the magic fresh. Yes, we all days where you wonder how you put up with him but then you wonder how he puts up with you. He thinks the same thing. But if you're both willing to invest yourselves in your marriage it can last . . and last.
Well, not that huge...
just saying...