I agree. Life is not a Rom-Com. Love isn’t always perfect and incredibly passionate. And, of course after saying that, I have to quote the original “Yours, Mine, and Ours”:
29th anniversary for me and the missus in a few months. I think if there’s any single thing that stuck with me as a fundamental success factor, it’s a piece of advice my brother in law gave me at some point just before my wedding; he told me to notice that the wedding vows I was going to be taking were not primarily ‘I do’, but instead ‘I will’. Love isn’t just an accidental feeling, it’s intentional action.
This is actually really important. As a friend that’s been married longer than I have puts it: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s almost all small stuff”.
Between that and “be friends” (which to me starts well before marriage - if your SO isn’t somebody you actually want to spend time with there is an issue) you have it pretty well covered.
You can only vet so much. You can have about three dealbreakers and the list of potential partners gets pretty thin on the ground.
I suppose there are still a few “we were too young” breakups out there, but increasingly those people don’t even have to make much of a commitment in the first place.
Most LTRs that crash and burn are the product of just one of the partners. Often due to infidelity. Maybe you should place your attention there, instead of the faithful partners who enter into relationships in good faith.
57 years. We met in Aug. 1963, spent the weekend of Nov. 22 hugging (google the date, if you don’t recognize it), got engaged on New Year’s Eve and married on Einstein’s birthday (pi day wasn’t a thing then). Original date was June 21, but we didn’t want to wait so long. On June 21, we went to Shea Stadium and saw a perfect game.
Secrets? Damfino. Much love, much trust.
Having watched countless relationships fall apart over the years, I don’t believe this is true. It’s incredibly rare that there’s a sinner and a saint. The problem is people think the little things they are doing to undermine their partner are not that big a deal. When in your mind the worst possible thing is infidelity you make the mistake of thinking the other stuff is inconsequential. It’s not.
With me and my ex-wife it was without a doubt a 50/50 proposition. We are still very good friends by the way. She would probably blame herself more but she’d be wrong.
i wonder if she’s trying to tell you something … 
40 year veteran here.
I think a lot of posters have said wise things. A marriage is kind of a cybernetic system which once set in motion, tends to not only perpetuate itself but gradually weave a complex network of satellite systems which also perpetuate themselves. All the memories, all the routines. Raising a child, building and furnishing a house. Surviving disasters and tragedies.
Conversely, if something starts to fray and isn’t attended to … the whole thing can suddenly go cattywhompus.
I believe that in any lasting marriage there are both bright and dark reasons a couple stays together. It isn’t really positive to say that we are both so very odd that it’s hard to imagine finding another suitable prospect, so we have stuck it out partially for that reason.
One thing I will say I’ve observed in pretty much all the successful longtime marriages I know (and by successful I mean, look like they actually like each other) is a shared set of values. Often but not always that means marrying into a similar culture and class. You may or may not enjoy the same hobbies, but you have enough-similar ideas about money management, politics, what is worthy and good, and what is ugly and reprehensible.
And the other thing that comes up over and over is mutual respect. Once you despise your partner it is pretty much over.
44 years next month, and we knew each other off and on for 6 years before that. We never lived closer than 600 miles apart before we got married. We had an intense relationship for a year, broke up, and kept seeing each other during the time apart. We both decided no one else was more interesting.
One thing not mentioned is money. We are totally compatible about money, in that neither of us spend money we don’t have, and not even money we do have. The only argument we ever have was when I thought putting in air conditioning was too expensive, and she didn’t. She was right.
We are both good at blaming bad behavior from the other person on outside factors like tiredness and stress. It’s a way of defusing things.
We also both came from families with long lasting marriages, which helps also. Good examples.
My husband and I had similar financial goals but I had major issues with spending money, so in the early days of our relationship I had to put a significant amount of effort into changing that about myself. I did change, with a little help, and now I’m the one in charge of the finances. It’s a burden off of him whereas it forces me to be more meticulous with our spending.
But there’s another factor here, which is that I don’t have to be as careful now because we have more money. The kind of stuff that would have sunk us just doesn’t anymore, and I’m more likely to say, order takeout vs splurge on a whole closet worth of clothes or something. My point is when you’re at a certain income level there are fewer opportunities to fight over frivolous spending. I think.
Thirded or fourthed. We met a bit later in life I suppose. I was 29 and she was 34. We’ve been together for around 30 years.
On paper we couldn’t be more different. I’m a white guy who grew up in a leafy middle class suburb with both parents and my dad only had one job the whole time. My wife is a black woman who grew up in an inner NYC neighborhood (Bedford-Stuyvesant) and had to, along with her younger brother, support her mother and grandmother along with work and college.
Naturally she often has a different take on things but at the same time we’re on the same general wavelength so we keep each other entertained by my naive optimism and her suspicious world-weariness but with great empathy and humor. For instance she hems and haws about getting her second vaccine shot and chuckles at the stridency with which I insist that she get it. I think she’s just teasing me.
This year will be our 27th anniversary. Been together 29 years. I jokingly used to attribute our success to no children and two bathrooms. But we didn’t have two bathrooms until a few years into our marriage, and we’ve been back to one only since moving back to the US.
I think it’s just the pure, dumb luck of stumbling upon someone who is compatible.
25 years married. 27 years together (I think), we were friends for 11 years before we started dating.
We still think each other is amazing…even when we are exasperated and tired of the other one’s shit (which happens - neither of us is perfect). We respect each other. We have enough joint interests to keep conversation going, enough separate interests for time apart. We like each other’s friends (or at least most of them - I broke up with one of his friends early in Covid - after 25 years, I didn’t have room for his shit and my own anxiety - and my husband didn’t have room for my feelings about his friend - they remain friends, I just don’t any more).
In other words, it seems to be the same formula as everyone else.
My ex left me for someone she knew before we ever met. He was single and available when we married. She basically only married me because I would give her the wedding and kids and he was a commitment phobe. As soon as he decided he wanted to be a stepdad, I was kicked to the curb.
I wish it was my fault. It wasn’t. 100% on her. Nothing between us ever mattered. If it was my fault, I could hope to improve on things. I can’t do that. This is worse. Infidelity is abuse, and it’s rampant in our society.
Friend, I’m sorry to hear that. But I would invite you to ask yourself why you bought in; did things change so much from the wedding day? Were there signs you should have heeded? I’m not calling you out. For your own good, I ask, is there a lesson here? Because life isn’t over, how will you avoid making the same mistake in the future?
My personal experience is that my first wife never really cared enough about me. Ultimately, I had to ask myself why I chose her—why I settled for her. Mind you, she was physically attractive, smart, driven…many said I landed quite a catch. But she wasn’t much into me. I thought she would change, warm up as time passed. Not really.
My brother once said that sometimes people reach an age where they’re ready to marry. If they’re dating someone at that moment, that’s the spouse. Well yeah I was graduating from college. Time to marry!
I think divorce is usually a 50/50 fault thing more or less.
I’m single and almost certainly always will be, but my parents have been married for close to fifty years now. And the reason they’re still together is simple - my mom (and dad) are in a religion that disallows divorce. If they weren’t she almost certainly would have dumped his ass when after the wedding he abruptly stopped dating and dancing and being fun, because he didn’t have to do that stuff anymore because he’d already hooked a wife. It wasn’t abuse, but it was one hell of a bait-and-switch.
It also helps that she has the patience of a goddamned saint - though for all I know she developed that after the marriage in self-defense.
I get that your pain is real and raw, and that you suffered a devastating loss, but I’m really bothered by the implication that this is somehow the same thing as being held in captivity and repeatedly beaten, sexually assaulted, or psychologically degraded. The psychological impact of abuse is often pervasive, affecting multiple areas of neurological functioning, and is at times debilitating - for the rest of the victim’s life. There is a reason PTSD is covered under the ADA.
Personally I’ve never been tempted to cheat though I did once unwittingly wander into what could have been an emotional affair with my best male friend. I told my husband as soon as it dawned on me what was happening and he was calm and understanding. I was going through a period of severe depression and my husband was working all the time so I was messaging this guy for hours while he was going through a divorce. We were each at maximum emotional vulnerability. When I told my husband, it became clear that I was just feeling really alone and wanted my husband, not this other guy. I’m fact, that’s how I framed it : I want you, I’m choosing you and I miss you. And once it was all out in the open we became closer, my friend is still our close mutual friend and the feelings I had for him dissipated as soon as I reconnected with my husband. It is actually possible to work through these things without blowing up the marriage. In fact this experience brought my husband and I closer together.
So I think that early intervention is key. When I’ve had crushes on other men I’ve made it a point to avoid them for a while. Not because there is any chance of me cheating but because there’s no sense nurturing an attraction to someone who is off limits. Better to head it off at the pass.
I really don’t understand the mentality of people who cheat but I don’t view those people as bad people. In most cases. I can think of a few serial cheaters who stay married for the status but just don’t give a damn about their partner.
Ah, but the cheating is usually accompanied by dishonesty by omission, then dishonesty by commission, then gas-lighting, all aimed at keeping the partner in the dark so they don’t know they’re in an open relationship, keeping them unaware of what sort of marriage they’re really in and possibly exposing them to STDs. These are not acts of good people.
Truth.