On July 2nd of this year, my wife Mary and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.
We married at her grandmother’s house in her small hometown in west Tennessee. More exactly, we wed at the window end of the wide hallway of the home.
We and the family did all the decorating. That consisted mostly of magnolia tree leaves and blossoms that we retrieved from some family’s yard. Mary’s mother made the wedding cake, and my uncle officiated the ceremony.
We did have a paid local photographer to do our wedding photography which resulted in a photo album of maybe 15 pictures.
Our wedding was truly cheap – I mean inexpensive.
But that leads to me to the first of several observations I would make as I think back over thirty five years of marriage.
Fancy Weddings Don’t Make a Marriage
A local wedding planner told me the other day that there was a study that showed a correlation between the amount of money that a couple spent on their wedding and the longevity of their marriage.
That is, the couples who had the most expensive weddings, had the higher rate of divorce.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen the study, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Certainly a successful marriage doesn’t require a having long list of wedding expenses requiring a small fortune.
A few years back, our church had a special celebration of all our couples who had been married 50 years or more. I was thinking there might be 20 or so couples. There were 43! The longest married couple had 63 years under their belt.
One of the things we wanted to do for the celebration was to have a photo montage of all the couples wedding photographs.
The problem is, once we started asking for photos, we found out that many of the couples didn’t have a single wedding photo. Others had only one or two black and white pictures.
Couples related that their wedding ceremonies took place in their parent’s home with only a hand full of people if any at all, and that the family minister performed the ceremony getting paid for his services with a bushel of beans.
Of course, this was another generation and divorces would never be considered by most. But all would agree that it’s not the amount of money you spend that makes a marriage. Something else is needed. (I write about marital commitment elsewhere).
I’m not against expensive weddings. They can be fun to attend - if you don’t have to pay the bills. But couples do seem to lose sight at times of what it is all about.
The wedding is a day, the marriage is a lifetime.
My advice is to have the wedding you want, but . . .
Put at least twice the effort into your marriage preparation
as you do the wedding planning.
Get the Best Start Possible on Your Marriage
Just Youngins Having Fun
My advice here runs counter to some of my practice.
My wife and I didn’t have any personal premarital counseling sessions. We did both take a required course in college on marriage and the family which gave us some insight into the issues of married life. But we didn’t really have the chance to dig into our specific issues with a knowledgeable guide.
Neither was our engagement very long. No – I’m not going to tell you how long! But it was below the average engagement length of one year or more.
Generally, the best engagement advice is to have a longer engagement rather than a shorter one.
The engagement period ups the game so to speak. It’s a huge step up in seriousness from dating and even a mutually agreed on exclusive relationship.
An engagement says to world, we are getting married and want to spend the rest of our lives together as husband and wife. That forces the couple to look at each more closely than ever before and to explore more fully than before the prospect of joining together in the most intimate of human relationships.
Around a one year engagement period is considered good by many experts.
This allows plenty of time to get adequate premarital counseling and training in marriage skills.
Keep On Building Your Marriage
But getting a good start on your marriage also means continuing to build the marriage in the first few years. Those first five years of marriage can be the hardest, and many marriages fail in the early years of marriage.
One thing Mary and I did right, was to attend a marriage enrichment seminar early in our marriage. When we told family where we going, they looked at us funny like, “Are you having marriage problems?”
We weren’t.
But instinctively we knew that we needed to continue to grow in our marriage.
I always encourage couples that once they are married to do things for their marriage.
That may mean attending a seminar as we did. Or, to visit again with their pre marriage counselor in about a year for a marriage check up. Or, to just find good marriage books to read and discuss together.
There is No One Secret to a Successful Marriage
While at a wedding last weekend I mentioned to a groomsman that I’d been married for 35 years. He asked me what our secret was.
I’ve heard that question more than a few times now, and my response is in part meant as a touch of humor, but is also true:
We don’t get mad at the same time!
If we ever get mad at the same time, there could be trouble.
Maybe that is our secret to a happy marriage.
Seriously, relationships are complex and what works for one couple might not work for another. We both have fairly even dispositions and don’t upset that often anyway. Neither of us likes to argue.
Other couples do like to argue, and can do so effectively. Arguing is the way they fix things. For us, and for some others, it works better for at least one to remain calm.
It requires a bit of maturity to do that.
When one person is upset, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment. That’s when it’s important to back away and realize that damage to relationship could be done if one of the two doesn’t remain calm, and in effect calms the other.
It doesn’t mean that issues are not dealt with – they must be. But couples resolve marriage problems in different ways.
So what is the secret for a good marriage? As said earlier, relationships are complex and there’s no one answer. Some couples just have more trouble than others for a variety of reasons. I’ve lost count of the number of people who divorced who said they never believed it would happen to them.
All the more reason to go back and re-read the first two observations in this post. Doing the proper preparation will provide the chance to learn about several factors that contribute to a long and healthy marriage.
These can include, though are not limited to: having good conflict resolution skills, continuing to have fun & growing your friendship, and entering your marriage with a strong commitment to your marriage.
Finding Motivations for Your Marriage
Oh, the Pralines in Savannah, GA!
I would add that couples need to find all the motivation they can to keep their marriage strong. For us, it was in part to give our children something we didn’t have – a stable family life. We both are children of divorce, and we can tell you that the divorce of your parents is something you never stop regretting no matter how old you are.
Sure, the old stay married for the sake of the children wasn’t always the best thing. Where there’s abuse or a constant environment of conflict – that isn’t good for children.
But that doesn’t mean that providing our children a home with both parents shouldn’t be a motivation – a strong one – for making sure that our marriage stays strong.
One of the best ways to love our children is to love each other, and provide for them a father and a mother who love each other. We are proud that we have done that for our four children. We aren’t sure they even appreciate it, since they don’t know anything else. But that’s ok too.
They do know that even with a big and busy family, we took time for each other over the years.
There are other things that have served as motivators for us too. My job as a minister certainly did. Others looked to us for an example of what husbands and wives should be. The ole minister fish bowl syndrome never bothered me. I need all the motivation I can get, and if the expectations of others helps, then it’s hard to see that as a bad thing.
Our faith is a big part of it too. We both have the conviction that marriage was designed by its Designer to be life-long and permanent.
So what is your motivation or motivations for being attentive to your marriage so that it continues to grow and remain strong?
A Long Marriage Brings Many Transitions
Horsing Around at Cousin John's
We’ve been married long enough now that we have been through some of the stages of marriage.
When preparing couples for marriage, we typically help the couple to identify their relationship strengths and growth areas. We call them growth areas rather than weaknesses, since that doesn’t sound so bad!
But the point I emphasize to couples is that they will always have growth areas. One reason for that is that they will go through the stages of life and stages of a marriage, each which brings its own challenges.
Such as? Well, what about the marriage problems after the baby comes?
And as the children grow along with the parental responsibilities – these can be detrimental to the marriage relationship if the couple doesn’t continue to adjust and find ways to keep the marriage a priority.
Dealing with deaths in the family, new jobs or changing aspirations of the husband or wife, adjusting to an empty nest . . . all these we have faced and more, and they require growth and the ability to adapt.
Things to Look Forward To
On the positive side, change does keep life interesting.
And you will find that you are still learning things about each other after many years together. Just the other day, I said to Mary, “I didn’t know that about you.” Life would be dull if after only a few years we knew everything there was to know about our mate.
What I’m trying to say is to anticipate that changes will take place, and that they require adjustments.
And while some changes may be difficult to adjust to, there are many positive changes to look forward to as well.
What do I mean? You will experience an ever deepening level of love. Endorphins get you married. Yes, there is a chemistry of love which suggests that when we fall in love we feel really good . . . because of all those natural stimulants our body is producing.
That’s ok because that’s the way we were made and the way things are supposed to work. And while it’s important to know that those wonderful feelings won’t always be there everyday, the good news is that love just keeps getting better. Just as there are stages of a marriage, there are stages of love.
After all these years being married to Mary, I can say that not because it sounds good, but because it’s true.
Which brings me to the last point I’ll make in this article. If you’ve hung with me this long, after thirty five years . . .
I Feel Like the Luckiest Man in the World
My wife is an answer to prayer – literally. Mary came into my life shortly after some intense praying to God about finding someone.
And I believe that God brought me the best person to be my wife.
She is a kind and caring person, and is often involved in helping others.
She has such a positive disposition that just a natural part of her. I wish I were more like that myself. She has often lifted me up when I’m down.
She is the best teacher that I know.
She is attentive to me and my needs. She is my number one fan.
She believes in me when I don’t believe in me, and has faith that I can do most anything I choose to do.
She is not a high maintenance woman. Her needs are simple and she’s not demanding.
And, as to her physical attractiveness, she has taken care of herself, and looks 25 years younger than her actual age.
I have read that one of the things that helps couples have long marriages is when the husband and wife feel lucky to married to the person they are married to. I truly do feel lucky. And amazing I think she feels lucky to be married to me – this is the only thing that makes me question her sanity.
Sorry for going on so long, but really with so many years behind us now, much more could be said. But I’ll stop for now, and start working on the next thirty five years. I’ll be 91 years old!
