We all know that young love is fun and exciting, but it doesn’t always last. I’d like to hear from Dopers who’ve been with their spouse or SO for a decade or more and are still madly in love. My own family is sadly rife with divorce, death, and long but not especially happy marriages, so it’s not often I get to hear someone speaking well of the person they’ve spent the last decade or two with. My own relationship is coming up on the ten-year mark - we’re very happy but I have no models for what a healthy relationship looks like another decade from now.
So, Dopers in long-term relationships, tell us all how much you love your honey today!
Coming up on sixteen years here, does that count? And I love him very much. He is my strong man, the man I can always lean on and rely on. Love really can show you the way.
Married 23 years this summer. Neither of us thought we’d ever get married, much less be the “old married folks” of our circle. Many couples that we thought were in for the long haul have split. Our tips: (1) Compromise. If one of us “wins” and the other one “loses,” then nobody really wins. We both have to be content with any decision. (2) There are really 3 entities in any marriage: the two spouses and the marriage itself. The marriage comes first.
My wife and I will celebrate or 25th wedding anniversary in a few months. It is a different relationship now than it was when we were newlywed DINKS. It’s nice to know that she has made the same decision that I made - that we will love each other no matter what.
No one in my immediate family (grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles or siblings) has ever been divorced. Everyone in my wife’s immediate family (except her) has been divorced at least once, most have been through multiple spouses. Two completely different upbringings when it comes to marriage models, but one great result!
These things helped along the way: separate computers, separate top sheets and blankets, we agree on the big stuff, we compromise and/or don’t sweat/argue about
the small stuff.
Mum and Dad, 51 and a bit years, going strong.
Dad’s eldest brother, 50 odd years, both deceased.
Dad’s next eldest brother 61 years, going strong.
Dad’s older sister, 40 + years, both deceased.
Dad’s other brother, 50 odd years, going strong.
Mum’s sister (2nd marriage) 40+ years.
Dad’s younger sister (2nd marriage) 30+ years.
My brother, coming up 20 year anniversary + 10 year co-habiting.
They are all such widely disparate personalities, I couldn’t hazard a theory why they’ve all succeeded.
Dad’s
Dated 3 years, married 25 years. A vigorous boil has settled into a nice slow simmer and that’s OK. I’m still surprised that she puts up with me and I hope she feels the same, so I keep trying to be the kind of person she would want to marry. I was just lucky I think, people tell me so, because I don’t think I’m working too hard at the marriage thing. Plus my wife is one of those hot women who loves a fat man, so that helps.
Just hit 20 years a couple months ago. I think you just need to be willing to grow and adapt. Neither of us have divorce in our close family. Adaptation is simply what you did. There is no give up. That said we are happy. The first 8 years were some serious growing pains but we worked thru it because we didn’t know of a different way.
17 years this year. Ten married. It’s wonderful and crazy and he’s my husband and I love him and he loves me and when I told our friends today that EVERY day is like Valentine’s Day with him, they may have laughed, but I was telling the truth.
It definitely counts! In, fact, I was thinking specifically of you when I said “spouse or SO”, as I knew you’d been together with your SO for a long time. Plus, I’d be happy to hear from some same-sex couples.
This is exactly what I was looking for. It’s amazing, and it brings tears to my eyes and hope to my heart. Which is helped by your next quote…
…as the we figured out the first two items on your list before we’d been together a year!
I love this and I hope the two of you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!
Married for 48, after dating for 4 years, so that puts us at 52 years together.
Love is deeper, and we have grown closer as we’ve grown to be different persons than we married. I think that is because we are in agreement on basic morals, and ways to conduct our lives. Plus she still laughs at my jokes, and I am still amazed that she puts up with my passion for my interests…including strange things in the refridgerator.
We went out to a fancy dinner for Valentines Day and talked the entire time… and she didn’t have any of the great desserts, as I had made her brownies at home before we left. And she gave me some of those chalky little hearts with silly sayings on them. Nice.
Sixteen total with my amazing wife. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and we often remark how lucky we are, how many things don’t seem to get between us the way they do others. I see others have mentioned how important it is to adapt and roll with changes and I couldn’t agree more. At the risk of being crude, I’ll also just flat out say sex is super important… keep it going guys.
We’ve been together for 12 amazing years. Yesterday we went out for dinner (actually not Valentine’s, but because I lost a bet to him*) and he sat across from me and I was looking at his massive smile and got such butterflies I completely lost track of what he was saying.
*I bet him our friends’ trip to Berlin was because he was going to propose to her. My SO said obviously not because they were going by bus. Clearly he was right, but now he is convinced that his rule about “if you are going to propose you don’t take the bus” is true.
I too come from not having functional models for love. And we both had some stiff commitment issues to over come. To such a degree that the titles ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ were frightening. We’ve been together 28 yrs now, without the benefit of marriage, as they say.
To be honest when this relationship began I seriously thought it would never go the distance, from what I’d seen, love didn’t last! I was very much in it thinking I’d just ride the ride, as it were, until the magic ran out.
The the good times and the ride continues unabated. Most of the weddings we’ve attended over the years wherein we were, every time asked pointedly, " when we were going to walk down the aisle", have since crashed and burned on the divorce rocks. Leaving many of those people terribly bitter and angry. Only some have managed to find their way out of that sinkhole, sadly.
It doesn’t look all that different, really. At this point, you know whether you see eye to eye on the big stuff, and you’ve worked out or worked around the little niggly stuff if you’re going to. In ten years you’ll look different, and you’ll have worked out or worked around all sort of new little niggly stuff that’s cropped up, and that’s about it. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve got the tools to keep going indefinitely.
We’ve been together for 18 years now (next year it’ll be half our lives :eek:) and it’s still fun and exciting, just in a different way. And there’s always an element of that new crush feeling because neither of us is the same person we were 18 years ago, or 8 years ago, or even this time last year, so I always have someone new to fall in love with, and I’m always a new person to do that falling. No matter who either of us is, though, he’s an awesome, amazing person and I’m lucky he puts up with my shit, and for some reason I’ll never quite fathom, he feels the same way about me.
Clearly he was right, but now he is convinced that his rule about “if you are going to propose you don’t take the bus” is true.