Songs, The Baboon Congress

Will You Marry Me?

77 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Beth-Ann.

When my son was young we were at Como Park and as happens on many sunny Saturdays there was a wedding party posing for photographs. It was a large Filipino family wearing flouncy dresses and elegant tuxes. The bride’s dress was layers and layers of white lace with a long train.

My son turned to me and said, “Now I know why you never got married. ”

I was interested in his analysis and asked him why.

His preschooler answer was, “That dress looks awfully itchy. You wouldn’t want to wear it.”

I think my unmarried state is related to more complex social interactions, and because Prince Charming never showed with ring in hand to propose.  But my son was right, that dress did look itchy.  With all the talk surrounding the marriage amendment I’ve recently been revisiting the question of why people get married and why at a time when the divorce rate is reported to be 50% do same sex couples in this country want so desperately to follow suit?

I think we’re past the time when women married for economic security. Similarly, all sorts of statistics and observations confirm that few people wait until marriage to have sex. Many couples don’t even wait until marriage to have kids. So if the sociological and natural law descriptions that marriage is for breeding and money/survival no longer apply, what’s the allure?

Some of the most heartfelt words about marriage these days seem to come from members of the gay community who in most states are denied the chance to marry. Two young Minnesotan men wrote the following:

On May 22nd we were married in the chapel. Surrounded by nearly 200 friends and family, in the presence of God, we made sacred vows to love and honor one another in sickness and in health, when times are good and when things get tough. We made a public promise of responsibility for each other and asked our loved ones to support us and hold us accountable. We married for the same reasons heterosexuals couples marry: To make a lifetime commitment to the one we love in the presence of our friends and family; to share the joys and sorrows that life brings; to be a family, and to be able to protect that family.

This ideal is reflected in a video posted by the local duo Neal and Leandra.

For those who have the legal right to do it, getting married is the easy part (itchy dress notwithstanding). Staying together appears to be the bigger challenge.

How and why do people stay married?

77 thoughts on “Will You Marry Me?”

  1. Good morning. I’ve been married for more than 40 years. There have been times when I had trouble getting along with my wife. Currently there aren’t any problems. We worked through our problems. I don’t think they will return, but I can’t be sire of this. We just seem to be able work together as a couple. Both of us think that we probably would stay single if our marriage came to an end. We are both very independent people. I believe both of us would not want to go through trying to find another person to live with that would respect of our needs for independence.

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  2. Good question, Beth-Ann. I can’t wait to read the responses to this one. Not that I’m an expert on this, or anything else for that matter, but I’ll take a stab at it.

    Key to a good marriage is having chosen the right mate in the first place! Someone who shares core values and interests, someone you trust and respect, and someone you like being around. Good looks may be what attracted you in the first place, but I doubt that will sustain any relationship for long. You certainly don’t have to agree on everything, but if there isn’t some substantial common ground, I think you’ll have a difficult time sustaining a lasting relationship. It’s also important to realize that people change over time; if you’re lucky you will grow together rather than apart. Keep communicating and don’t make too many assumptions about your mate. As we all know there are many pitfalls and lots of reasons marriages fall apart. I think it’s essential to be attentive and recognize that any marriage that isn’t nourished will be vulnerable; don’t take your spouse for granted. Celebrate each other in little ways, surprise your mate with small gifts or gestures, enjoy each other. Fight fair and forgive each other for mistakes, be considerate. And don’t forget to play and have fun together. It’s obviously easier said than done, but I think people stay married because they feel safe and appreciated in a good relationship, stronger together than apart.

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    1. Yes, I think what you say is true, PJ. I think learning to be tolerant of your partner is a key factor because I don’t think there is such a thing as a perfect marriage. You will need to overlook some things that bothersome or at least not over react to these things.

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  3. I’ve pondered this for countless hours. For a marriage to work for many decades, it has to have a great deal going for it at first. The couple must find each other appealing and interesting, so much so that the spouse continues to be appealing and interesting after the “new” wears off. And while the most important aspect of that appealing chemistry is psychological, it sure helps if the partners find each other physically hot. Second, the couple needs an extraordinary commitment to the marriage itself, so that when troubles arise (and they will, the natural response is to fix what is wrong rather than bailing out.

    The really tricky part is that most marriages start with a great deal that is right, but then both partners start evolving toward the person they will be in middle and late years, which is simply to say that they change and go on changing all the time. The marriages that go the distance are those relatively rare marriages when things start well but then evolve in such a way that the partners continue to find each other interesting, fun and sexy. It is so, so hard for a relationship to change (as it cannot avoid doing) while keeping both partners in love with each other.

    And that leads me to a sad conclusion. It is usually easy to look back at a failed relationship and to think you know why it failed. It is virtually impossible to look at a young relationship and to know that it will still work in thirty or forty or fifty years. It is my sense–which I regret but cannot deny–that there is one hell of a lot of luck involved in marriages that go the distance. I stand in awe of the folks who can make that work, but I suspect that they were maybe as lucky as they were good.

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    2. I hate to say this, but I think sex is vastly over rated. A good sex life is wonderful, but I don’t think it’s based on physical performance or attraction. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised that many relationships fail because sex was the main attraction to begin with. I’ve had sexual partners in my life who were great in bed, but other personality traits quickly established that they were not men I’d care to live with long term. While I suspect that men and women see sex as having a different role in their relationship, I think there are other attributes that are much more important. Of course, your age age makes a huge difference in what you’re looking for in a marriage partner. At this stage of my life, a man wielding a vacuum cleaner or doing dishes is a lot sexier than one driving a fancy sports car or wearing the latest fashion.

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  4. How do you stay married? My favorite quote is: mankind has leaned to suffer evils while evils are sufferable rather than to right himself by abolishing the means to which he has become accustomed.
    I think this is true of political parties, job situations, partnerships, addictions, living situations lots of stuff. Finding the right partner is a good start but I doubt there’s a perfect partner rather an ability to hang in there long enough to learn how to function in the situation you have placed yourself in. I have the good fortune of having much experience in this area. I burned through a number of long serious relationships as a young man, went through a wife and am on thin ice with this one. We have very different views of life and the things that are important. Appreciation is transitional and the ok ness of the moment is contempt raising stuff in a moment of oh yeah another day. I have learned to do what I need to do to make myself happy, understand that no matter what I do I will not make my partner happy and go through life the best I can. My children learn many things about how to do things and many more about how not to do them. I wish my children and for the matter the whole world well and hope they can find happiness and fulfillment on this planet. Friends are important and if you can finding to hang in there for lifes journey you done good. Marriage seems to temper that premise with expectations and disappointments. I love my family I hate the stuff that comes along within the walls but I also love what comes also with it,
    I bet I’ll be back with more but that is a start at the unanswerable. Take the good with the bad and be the best you can be. Hope your partner does the same and be forgiving when either of you fail. Nothing to it unless you expect success.

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    1. Lots of people are smarter and more insightful than I am and don’t get lost in the gonna be’s as I do. I meet a person and tend to believe that my take on who the person I am talking with has a resemblance to the person I think they are. I meet a person and I am pretty clear about how I see the world and I have conversations about whatever comes to the surface. I can go for extended periods where I am not aware I am dealing with a totally different view on how the world works because not everyone wears their philosophy and outlook on their sleeves and lo and behold the person I enjoyed at breakfast meetings or after hours deals turns out to like firearms and bondage and gay bashing. With life partners I am a little more tuned in but only a little. Back later Saturday calls…

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  5. My parents will celebrate 70 years of marriage this December. They have stayed married through really tough times, and I think the key was that they always, always found something funny every day and shared it with the other one. Husband and I will celebrate 30 years next September. I can’t imagine spending time with anyone else who wouild be more interesting and as concerned about me as I am concerned about him. Tolerance is the key, but is tough, at least for me, who can be so intolerant at times.

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        2. These are my very elderly parents you are talking abou! I should think you describe two very different scenarios. Then again, I haven’t lived at home since 1976. Who knows?

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  6. I don’t know. If I knew, I’d have the relationship that Neal and Leandra sang about. That song has brought me to tears since we all listened to it on TLGMS. I’ll never know what an “old love” is like. I never found anyone who wanted to try it with me.

    I’ve stopped looking. If I was to start looking again, I’d look for someone who is smart, witty, musically talented, loves being outside, is not needy or smothering, wants to travel, and has respect for me and the life I’ve led. I came close to finding him once. He had all of the right qualities except for the respect. He left me for someone else. That kind of killed my enthusiasm for ever finding the right person.

    Great job, Beth-Ann! This is an interesting and timely topic, accompanied by a fantastic video. Now I need a new box of kleenex.

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    1. I have proven remarkably inept at determining when someone on the trail is kidding, so perhaps I should keep my mouth shut. But I’m sad, Krista, if one bad experience was all it took for you to give up on finding a mate. I’m not suggesting you go looking for one, merely be open to the possibility that one might show up someday.

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  7. Staying together for 30 years… not a challenge. It is the easiest thing to do. Taught me patience, selflessness, and kindness. Not that I was in need of those qualities. The only way to maintain a marriage is to treat your partner like your best friend. Just like I wanted to be. Standing in front of a group of my peers and parents , now that was scary.

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  8. I was married for a total of almost 40 years; 10 years the first time, 29 the second. I’ve been happily single now going on a decade and have concluded that some people simply aren’t meant to partner for life. Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Want, puts the figure of truly health, robust, dynamic couples at around 5%. In my personal and professional work focused on relationships, there’s no getting around the reality that healthy relationships take ongoing, consistent “work”. There’s also no getting around the unconscious reality (for most) that we, according to Hendrix, partner to heal our childhood wounds. Mine are such that an attraction to a man triggers an “urge to merge” (otherwise known as “losing yourself” in a romantic relationship). Having let go of romantic delusions is related, for me, to too many experiences of making myself believe that “this one” was something he never turned out to be. Letting go is directly related to a sense of running out of time and the energy required to build a brand new relationship. I’ve gone from being a hopeless romantic to being a realist at this stage of life and find that a life without intense yearning or neediness is wonderfully peaceful and satisfying. I love having all the closets to myself, staying up all night when I feel like it, and not being accountable to another person’s constant presence. I guess that the bottom line in responding to today’s question for me is that I can’t personally come up with a good enough reason to be married at this point. At times, I do observe a grey-haired couple holding hands and wistfully think how sweet that is, but it’s long since ceased to elicit yearning for such.

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  9. Afternoon–

    My parents just celebrated 64 years last week.
    Kelly had an Aunt and Uncle who were such a perfect example of a good relationship and he she died after 31 years of marriage and he died on what would have been their 34th anniversary. Kelly knew it was coming; he was having health issues anyway and Kelly said he’s going to die on that day; he just missed his wife that much.

    Relationships are tough. The advice I’ve always heard is ‘dont’ go to be mad’ but you know, in the morning – at least in our case- I’m not so mad and it’s easier to have a calm discussion. So that bit of advice is dubious at best.

    Kelly and I have been together 22 years now.
    You have to be friends first. And a short memory helps. I can’t remember what she said last week so I can’t hold a grudge. Now, the trick is, what to remember and what to forget. There will be some trial and error on that.

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    1. Wow- I was distracted writing that and have a few typos: ‘She’ died first, and then it’s don’t go to BED mad.

      Right; people grow and change. And you have to respect each other. I am so grateful that Kelly can tolerate my crazy schedule whether it’s milking cows or farming at night or being gone all weekend for theater.
      And it wasn’t easy; there was some tough times as we both worked that out – especially after kids, but we stick together. And we both know the other has our back.

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  10. There were two things that allowed me to get to “I do” with Husband: he accepted me as I was, warts and all, and I knew we would still have stuff to talk about when we were 80. The latter wasn’t so much because of common interests (in fact we have very few common interests – which works for us), but because we are both curious and because we like to talk with the other about our world(s). There have been times I have paused and wondered, when it’s been rocky, or he’s making me crazy (or I’m making him crazy) why I should stay – and the simple answer is I can’t imagine a life without him in it. Crazy in love? Naw, that’s just not me. He has, quite simply, become a part of who I am; he is deeply rooted in my soul.

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  12. A good thing to do to keep a marriage going is to notice when your spouse does something that should be recognized such as going out of the way to help with something. Also, I think it is good to recognize blog members when they do a guest blog and I didn’t remember to do that today. Thanks, belatedly, for the good topic and nice post, Beth-Ann.

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      1. I sure hope you are joking.
        You are joking, right?
        It is, what is it, 3:30, or is it really still 2:30, or maybe it’s 4:30. Whenever this is, nope. Got nothing. Do you assume I would know something because I was a pastor and saw many marriages close-hand? I sure did. Often their ugly side. Saw several marriages of over 60 years. A couple delightful to see at such close range. Others were hard to tell at all why they were still together.Not that they should not have been. Just did not see why they were. One couple I had to try to work with, or at least her, is still together after 45 years now and I bet she still hates him and he still cheats on her, in the adultery sense as well as with how he spends so much time and money with his male friends. I bet she still tells everyone how terrible he is and how wonderful she is for putting up with him.
        Because I have been married 47 years? Do I have the slightest idea really why we have stayed married this long? For one thing, there was never a moment when I even considered divorce and Sandy would say the same. I cannot imagine a life without her. How will I survive if she does die, or I guess I should say when she does die. Habit is a large part of 47 years maybe a bad habit. Maybe just too lazy to do anything but stay
        married. Maybe just too cowardly to do anything else. I don’t know why we have never ever thought of divorce. Just lived it day by day. We made many bad decisions about things but that has had little to do with our marriage. Or our good decisions.
        Lots of long-married people say lots of blather about why they have been married so long. I could say because we have always been as fully in love with each other as when we committed or mad fast marriage. (It was stupid to get married the way we did, but how smart is it to get married period?) We have always been in love. But why is that true? That’s the same question as why have we been married 47 years. Because of our faith? I would insist that’s true, especially since I found faith in my love for a woman of deep faith. But faith seems to have little to do with good long marriages. People of faith get divorced about as often I think. I know some good long marriages, or I think they are/were, in people of no or weak faith..
        Because we share so much in common? We were famous in Two Harbors for never being seen together in public. Friends used to joke that they knew we had met in the bedroom at least twice. But that’s just the surface. We shared far more in common than people really know, except our children know. We found things to have in common. I have never gone hunting or fishing with the boys. I overworked as a teacher and as a pastor, for 11
        years at the same time. She supported me in that, found her own things, built her own strong friendships, found and fulfilled her Christian mission.
        (Sorry, never mean to blather on. Call me Ol’ Blevins!) But still not ready to sleep again.)
        Is it because we were raised in good models? My parents were very oddly matched in most ways but were in love for their 49 years and 7 months, although neither would have publicly said so.and both would have had no real other option. A large part of theirs was habit or cowardice. My wife was raised in a terrible marriage.
        I just don’t know how to explain why marriages last or not, why they are good or not.
        Nope. Got nothing but lots of wordage.
        Good night.

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        1. I think you and I have pondered this mystery far more than most folks, Clyde. Your response to the question of how people stay married is something like “damned if I know.” My answer is something like “luck.” I think we agree.

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        2. Well, Clyde and Steve, right you are. There probably is no good answer if you really want to know. In my case we just say we somehow got stuck together and have stayed stuck together.

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        3. Life gives us the illusion that we understand things. A happily married couple can look back over decades of happiness and conclude that humility and respect were the keys to their long marriage. But my failed marriage had plenty of humility and respect, yet it didn’t make it past 31 years. I think and think about these things, never gaining understanding of the sort that would allow me to predict which marriages will make it and which will not.

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        4. I had no answers in the middle of the night. Wait until I’ve ridden 20 miles and have in me the sanctimony of going to church. Eaten a good meal. Then I’ll have all the answers..

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        5. Well, I guess I asked for it! Sorry for your sleepless nights, Clyde.

          No, I didn’t think that your having been a pastor gave you any special insights into what makes a marriage last; at our age, we have all seen lots of marriages up close and personal, some good, some bad. I also did not consider that your faith might have given you any special insights. I do know some people of deep faith whose faith informs their lives, but I’m afraid that’s not what I see in most proclaimed people of faith. But I know you’ve been married a long time, and from your posts over the past year-and-a-half, I know you to be introspective. Because of that I wondered whether you might have gleaned some wisdom on this subject. Blah, blah, blah, I’m not being playful enough am I? But, I’ll give you credit, despite the rather surprising tone of your response, it tells me a whole lot more than did your initial response. So thank you.

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        6. As to Steve’s speculation that he thinks he and Clyde have pondered this question far more than most people. All I’ve gotta say is, are you kidding me?

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        7. It has been close to an obsession with me for over a decade, PJ. I grant other people enough respect to think that they are more mentally balanced than I, and thus they don’t obsess on unanswerable questions!

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        8. sometimes wordage helps. i think your stuff has some value clyde. how to duplicate you and sandy, no problem just becoe you and sandy. how for someone else to do it? thats a different story.
          ot do you think a film could be made of quilted sky? i wonder if the scenes could be done todays or if you would have to rebuild the sets to duplicate the 1950 north shore.

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        9. Steve: actually I have not pondered the issue of long marriage much. I was pondering it as I wrote last night more than I ever have I think.
          PJ: I do think folks of failed marriages may have much greater insight into the issue than those who have had long marriages. I have noticed however in my life how people do often repeat the mistake of their first marriage in their second, or very carefully do not.
          tim: my book as a movie would be tough unless you changed the setting, time and/or place. But the farm is there, sort of, with much of the land looking the same. Also, movies want action, far more action than I wrote.

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  14. This line from Anna Karenina seems to be quoted a lot lately. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
    It is one of those quotes that sounds right but I think is just plain wrong. I think each and every marriage and family has to find it’s own mix, or they don’t, or they just stumble along. I think there are few generalities about success in families and marriage. I have a close relative who has by all appearances a happy marriage. They do much happily together such as travel and much apart in their separate interests. Have been married for 47 years. So the husband who thinks he knows everything is now telling everyone what makes their marriage so strong and therefore a model for the world is everything has to be 50-50. Anyone paying close attention can tell you its is about 95-5 and he’s the 5. But happy they are.
    Ol’ Blevin shall be gone for the rest of the day on errands.

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    1. For some reason, I find that very amusing that this guy tells everyone that the reason his marriage is so strong is because everything is 50-50, but in reality it is 95-5 and he is the 5. Yet they are happy!

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      1. Boy, did those errands go fast.
        I feel sorry for you all; you cannot smell the chicken soup I started.
        My 95-5 may be biased a bit, or a lot. The pregnant daughter of this couple asked her three-year-old son what he thought they should name his coming baby sister. He suggested “Baby Brother.” I think it was in self-defense against his very strong-willed mother, sister, and girl cousins. That genetic line has produced so many assertive women, dare I say a few aggressive women. Many have managed to choose more passive husbands, making a good match out of that difference. Those who have chosen assertive husbands have most often, I think almost always, divorced.
        The 95-5 couple match up well their different areas of assertiveness and skill. It’s just that he has the knack of turning anyone who stays near him for two minutes into his attendant.

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  15. Like a few others here…no clue. Luck does seem to play a part. Like Steve, I think it can be impossible to look at a young marriage and predict that the two people will change in the same way – or at least in a compatible way, I like what other people have said about being friends, sharing core values, forgiving, accepting each other as you are, respect…but it seems like there is more to it than that. I just don’t know what that elusive thing is.

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  16. i think b a that the real question is why would anyone get married. krista has given up, ba knew better, bir jacque pj an i have all moved on to plan b and the truth is that if you are happy with yourself you are happy with someone else. if the partner yo u choose helps you to feel good about yourself you win if they beat you down and try to focus on what you dont do or are doing wrong so they can feel bigger or whatever it is that spurs them on you lose. simple as that. find someone who sees the glass half full and is willing to work together to get the other half in there and you are ready for a lifetime of working together to make the world a place you want to be. partner is important but it starts with you. once you get you right then you need to make sure you have a situation where you can flourish, if you screwed up, own it and get on with it. if you had your ducks in a row when you chose your lifes direction then you carry on. to assume a person who sees the world though the negative filter can be turned around is balderdash. to hope a corner will be turned when the problem at hand is solved is the stuff dreams are made of. there will be another and if the solution of choice is blame misery and woe, it likely will be next tie too.
    pick well. friends are easy, they can be positive for a couple hours a week, or if they are negative you can hope to be a positive influence and get the hell out, if its at home its a problem. and no damned fun.

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    1. For now Plan B works fine for me, tim, but in all honesty, should something happen to Hans, I can’t imagine that I would remarry (even if someone were willing to marry me, but let’s not go there!). A successful marriage demands work and compromise, and this stage of my life, I don’t know how many more compromises I have left in me.

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  17. You ask why anyone would want to be married, tim, and then make some good points in answer. Of course, two good reasons to be paired up are sex and companionship. I’ve had a lot of time to study the effects of the single life on me. It isn’t good for me. Specifically, I am never quite as much myself as when I am able to be giving and loving for someone special. That is the center of what makes me happy. Thus it is sad to have no partner to be good to, just as it is sad to live without a dog when you really enjoy that kind of companionship.

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  18. I went to the marriage debate at the Fitz. Bishop Gene Robinson was oh so eloquent. One of the points he made came from the rector of a church in NY. He said that marriage preparation with young straight people was a pain because they seemed mostly interested in florists and photographers. In contrast, the gay couples delighted in every aspect of the preparation and wanted to talk about the meaning of the vows and the important parts of a relationship. Could it be that marriage seems more special when it is denied to you or at least hard to achieve?

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    2. reminds me of the young woman who wondered where all the good looking well dressed sensitive well read young men were and she was told they were at home with their husbands

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    3. I worked with a gal who seemed more concerned with matching the colors of jelly beans in candy jars to her bridesmaids dresses for her wedding reception than what the event preceding the reception meant. I heard her huff about people buying her gifts that weren’t on her registry (she planned to return them simply because the weren’t on her “gimme” list) and then post-wedding she whined about people who brought kids to the reception and “ruined” her cutesy idea of having people write poems and read them because they let the kids read poems created at their tables (apparently she only wanted literate adults with excellent oratory skills to read). I felt bad about her poor husband – he seemed like just one more accessory or detail to fuss about than half the reason the event was even happening. Poor guy.

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      1. Anna, I’m not joining the pity party for that poor guy. Your co-worker does sound like bridezilla, but he’s the one marrying her. If he’s on board with her making all of these decisions (presumably with her mother) and doesn’t haven’t any objections to this arrangement, he clearly is getting what he deserves.

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        1. I sure hope he knew what he was getting himself into…and if he did, he does indeed get what he deserves (though I wouldn’t wish that on most people – including several I don’t even like much).

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      2. I think that is is the distinction between having a wedding so you can gat married, as opposed to getting married so that you can have a wedding. I fear for the longevity of marriages for those who marry with the latter in mind.

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        1. My co-worker, I fear, was getting married so she could have a wedding. I hope her husband is well ready to use the phrase “yes, dear” a lot in the next several years…

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    4. My daughter in marriage counseling tells the couple that they need to spend at least as much time planning the marriage as they do planning the wedding. Here is an area where the media images are hard on our culture.

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  19. Beth-Ann, I think a lot of straight couples are much more focused on wedding preparations than marriage preparation. Lavish and expensive weddings followed by honeymoons in exotic places are so common that some couples start out married life with significant debt. What’s worse, many have given littler or no thought to what their life together will be like once the honeymoon is over. Perhaps because the media and wedding planners haven’t as yet targeted gay couples as potential big spenders in that area, they haven’t as yet fallen into that trap. But I think you’re right, when faced with opposition most of us can mobilize a lot of resources to achieve what we want, and we don’t want to be proven wrong, so we do our homework.

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    1. Just learned this evening that my friend, Mary,a former nun, is working diligently to try to mobilize as many people as possible for the Vote Yes effort on the marriage amendment. Guess I’ll just have to work hard to try to cancel out her efforts. Doesn’t make for an easy friendship I can tell you that.

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  20. I married my spouse for his weather. Almost every hike, canoe trip, etc with my family growing up was done in the rain. Jeff has the best weather karma and activities now are done almost always with sun and wind at our backs.

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  21. OT, just to make some of you very jealous: my son started his new job Thursday. He got a brand new top-of-the-line Mac laptop fully loaded. The company operates entirely online. All work is done in Google docs out of a cloud. He cane work out of home, for instance, on the two days a year Seattle gets snow. Seattle is famous for not owning more than a very few snow plows. They just wait for it to melt.

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    1. Good for him, Clyde. It must be quite the relief for him to haven gotten back in the saddle so soon after his layoff. Chicken soup sounds great; we’re having left-over ox tail ragout over pappardelle.

      I think you’re right that people who have a failed marriage behind them tend to think more about what the heck went wrong, as well they should. When I divorced I was determined never to remarry, just wasn’t prepared to trust anyone that much. It was six years before I met and married Hans, and because we had both been divorced, neither of us took that step lightly. We discussed ahead of time issues that were not negotiable, and tried to figure out what our commitment to marriage really meant. We had both been pretty independent, still are, but you can’t expect your marriage to be successful if you continue to act as if there’s no significant other that you need to consider in whatever decisions you make. We routinely do things separately, with others or by ourselves, but we always make sure the other knows of those plans ahead of time. We also make a point of doing things together. Still, we have managed to have some very significant collisions of wills (one involving shag carpeting, of all things). Little things do make a difference. Renee is right, a sense of humor is a HUGE asset in a marriage.

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  22. Another OT: remember the other day when the topic is what makes you so frustrated you can’t stand it (or you want to cry or shriek or throw things…)? Here’s a new one for my list: screws and bolts provided by a manufacturer that don’t fit. Am trying to put drawers into a workbench and the machine screws that are supposed to hold the glides in place have heads that are too big to pop through how they are supposed to so the glide can be attached to the brackets. I have said a few bad words. Good thing Daughter and friends are outside and can’t hear me…(at a later time, when I am not the lone responsible adult in a house with three girls under the age of 10, I will bring one of the mis-sized machine screws to the hardware store and see if I can’t find a better fit – but right now it’s just #$%!!@#@!#!!! frustrating).

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    1. My grandson is a fan of Lego kits, elaborate ones. With his father so very busy right now, I get to build some of them with him. In all his many kits every piece has been there, plus a few extras of common key ones. The instructions are very clear. It all amazes me. No wonder the stuff is high-priced.

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  23. Here’s a link to a TED Talk that may at first seem unrelated to the topic at hand, but with closer scrutiny I think you’ll see the connection:

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  24. I didn’t get to read all your thoughtful responses until now (busy weekend).

    Having had two not-so-great marriages, I feel better equipped to say what I know was wrong about mine. Marrying for the wrong reasons, not daring to discuss the big issues before or during the marriage, not being respectful, putting up with the little annoyances but carrying resentments (these are on both sides).

    The long-lasting marriages that I have observed SEEM to be between great people who are interesting and interested and who might have fewer insecurities than the rest of us. “Seem” is the operative word.
    I have been surprised to learn that apparently solid relationships have failed. One never knows what is really going on in someone else’s marriage.
    I do think that luck is definitely involved.

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