Happy Marriages (the un-divorce thread)

[CaliKid]

Seeing the sad thread of the person potentially going through a divorce and all the horrible things that come with that how people chime in with the things you do (big or small) that lead to a successful marriage!?

We are at 16 years of bliss.

I am a fan of get-aways without the kids a few times a year. Sometimes a night or two and sometimes up to about 5 nights max. Good for re-charging a relationship.

I would say my wife's biggest contribution to our success is always trying to do things to make me happy which, in turn, makes me always to do things to make her happy.

So far so good and hopefully it stays that way!

What works for the success of your marriage?

 

[pacergal]

Communication and listening, REALLY Listening, and voicing back what you understand for clarification, has been the key for us. Give and take, it's not always 50/50, sometimes 90/10. Be open to change. Stay on the same wavelength with kids, if you have them. Remembering what you fell in love with about each other. Expressing "I love you".
Time together and "me time" is important also.
Going on 40 years! It hasn't always been fun or easy, however, I know he always has my back and we still make each other laugh!

 

[Nemo2]

 

[Red Badger]

October will be 28 years for us. We had a few rough patches in the early years, but other than an occasional brush fire, we're two peas in a pod.

My Korean born and raised DW speaks English, but not with great fluency (but a hell of a lot better than my Hangul). Sometimes, we have to work very hard at getting the comms right.

In our house, she was a SAHM. She worked harder than I ever did. She pushed me to get my undergrad and MBA while working FT. I was also in the Army Reserve. My job evolved from medium / heavy travel to road warrior. So, ultimately, she was pretty much a single parent for many years. My debt of gratitude to her is beyond measure.

We enjoy our time together. Our daily walks with the fur kid are often hand-in-hand. Sometimes we're chit-chatty. Other times, hardly a word spoken; just being in the moment. We're both pretty confident that we're in in for the long game, and work at it daily.

 

[LakeRat1]

My wife and I are 8 years in age apart, she is 64 I am 56....... We have been married going on 34 years ....... When she retired from nursing at 59.5, I retired 3 months later as a result of our entire IT Department being offered an early-out..... I had not planned to retire until I was 55. After talking with 3 different FA I decided to take the early-out package and I too retired at 52....... We are very fortunate to have been able to retire 4+ years ago.... So much has changed in our lives and we are enjoying every minute and each other ......

 

[Mdlerth]

Love conquers all

Give and take, it's not always 50/50, sometimes 90/10.

I figure it's more like 60/60. Analogous to LBYM, you build marital "wealth" by consuming less than you earn.

Remembering what you fell in love with about each other. Expressing "I love you"...we still make each other laugh!

Humor can overcome an awful lot of the things that go wrong in life. I am (almost) never without it:

Knock knock. Who's there? Olive. Olive who? Olive you!
​

 

[Conundrum]

Been together 32 years. 29 married. I get more and more enamored with my wife every year

 

[Car-Guy]

40+ years of ups and downs and first marriage for both of us. Actually we have very few (but some) common interest. She does "seem interested" in my various hobbies which takes a lot of my time. (we both care a lot about our only child and our dog, in that order ) We do share the same "political" views and most (but not all) views of world issues, which is often a topic of discussion for us.

She's a say at home type that likes to keep house and watch TV, especially movies. I'm always wanting to go and do "something" and I often take short one or two trips without her (which is a good break for both of us "I think"). I'm a spender and she's a saver. Unspoken trust has always been at the top of our list we give each other space.

I really don't want to think too much about how and why it works for us as well as it does.

 

[athena53]

I was the third wife of my second husband. Sounds like something out of the Khardashians, doesn't it? He was 15 years older. I had a college degree and a respectable professional designation; he'd dropped out of college after he ran out of money and made less than half my salary. It was a match made in heaven.

What helped: common values. We met in a Bible study class and had very similar financial priorities, including when to pinch pennies and when to splurge. We traveled a lot- he knew European history, I could deal with most of the languages. He turned out to be the stepfather my son sorely needed. It made me realize why children are brought into the world with two parents. Neither of us ever felt we had to "win" against the other at anything.

I can't say we had any rough spots- we didn't even have any arguments. The worst thing I can say about him is that he was an apathetic housekeeper and neglected the weeds in the garden and let them go out of control. (I worked FT and that was supposed to be his area of responsibility.)

He died in November, 2016. We'd been married 13 years, together for 20. I'm doing amazingly well, maybe because I figured this was the likely outcome when you marry someone that much older. I'd like another good man in my life but he'll be a tough act to follow.

 

[kitesurfer2]

9 year anniversary today! my 1st lasted 7.5 years. 2nd 12.5 years. 3rd 8 years. judge away

my brother has been married 25 years...ups and downs they say. they won't ride in the same car even. like I told him life is too short to waste a minute of it.

 

[Bestwifeever]

What’s that old joke, I’ve been married 30 years, five of them happily?

I knew only one couple who were crazy in love from the minute they met until the wife passed away 50 years later. They embarrassed their children no end.

 

[DFDubb]

I try not leave her locked in the closet w/o food and water for too long.

10 years here and it's honestly been effortless, we've never really even had an argument. I let her be her and she lets me be me. We have many common interests and see eye to eye financially. Some things that are very different for us is that we don't/won't have kids and we spend a LOT of time apart, like over 50%. We both travel for work and often go more than a week, multiple times a month w/o being in the same city or country even. That part isn't a lot of fun, but I am left wondering if it is a good or bad thing.

No tips here. I often hear people say that marriage is hard work and I just don't/can't comprehend that. If it was for me, I wouldn't be married. 1 job is enough for me.

 

[Walt34]

We're coming up on 30 years of wedded bliss at the end of this month. I can't say there was never a time of discontent but the "big D" was never even thought of. Retirement was a big adjustment for both of us and for a while it was almost like we were joined at the hip until we learned that there is such a thing as too much togetherness. So sometimes she'll go off with some friends or family alone and that's fine with me. Or I'll go off flying R/C airplanes if it's one of the bigger ones that I can't fly in the back yard.

We're going out to dinner the evening of the anniversary and I'll probably even wear a tie and jacket.

 

[audreyh1]

My DH has to put up with a heck of a lot from me. But he still seems to think I’m hot after all these years. Lucky me. (30 years together)

 

[MichaelB]

Tolstoy wrote (Anna Karenina) "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." According to this view, every successful marriage has a number of attributes, and all successful marriages share them. Makes sense to me.

 

[kgtest]

40+ years of ups and downs and first marriage for both of us. Actually we have very few (but some) common interest. She does "seem interested" in my various hobbies which takes a lot of my time. (we both care a lot about our only child and our dog, in that order ) We do share the same "political" views and most (but not all) views of world issues, which is often a topic of discussion for us.

She's a say at home type that likes to keep house and watch TV, especially movies. I'm always wanting to go and do "something" and I often take short one or two trips without her (which is a good break for both of us "I think"). I'm a spender and she's a saver. Unspoken trust has always been at the top of our list we give each other space.

I really don't want to think too much about how and why it works for us as well as it does.

Me and DW relatiionship to the 'T'. How do you reaffirm the trust, besides just listening and doing? It seems as we grow with our small children, new trust is required and the strains of the existing trust rear up.

We have ups and downs but in the end I feel opposites attract. One thing DW keeps mentioning is a trip away from kids. At 1 and 3 we have not done that yet. She's been on one trip, I've been on one trip, and I've been on a couple trips with DS, but never both of us alone since the kids. I think this might be the missing ingredient.

Otherwise weekends are busy, I try to do my busy work during the week since I know DW has a stronger desire to get out and bout on weekends.

 

[Dtail]

My DGF and I have been together 7 years. We haven't had any rough patches, but have on occasion have had very short term blowout arguments, but no lasting effects.
We spend most of our time together.

 

[candrew]

DW & I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary this past March.

We've agreed that a solid marriage requires cooperation first and foremost. Without it, togetherness is difficult to sustain.

Over the past 4 decades, our ability to ride out the ups and downs has required give and take on both of our parts in addition to forgiveness, not taking each other for granted or holding grudges and plain old hard work.

A sense of humor and especially the ability to laugh at oneself has been essential for each of us.

 

[kimcdougc]

Knew my DH 2 weeks before we got married. Just past our 39th wedding anniversary on July 11th. All of our families said we wouldn't make it, alas, they were wrong. We have always been considerate of each other and when I had an aortic valve replacement 5 years ago and he took care of me, I can't explain that I now know how much he really loves me.

I knew he always loved me but to have someone do everything for you (when the opportunity requires it) is the essence of true love.

Now that we are both retired for over 3 years together, we have learned that some time apart is good. We have our together time and then our own interests.

What makes it work? Being best friends. We have our moments, but we raised (2) children together and now we are "just us" and our dog of course living our dreams on our bucket list.

God is good to us and we are good to each other. Love DH to the moon and back going on 40 years.

You have to work on it. Life is short. Seize the day.

 

[rodi]

Married 18 years.
Humor and respect are the two big factors.

- He's funny.... very funny. And I laugh at his jokes and humor, which he appreciates. I can also take his teasing because I know he loves me and it's not done mean spirited... and my humor tends towards self deprecation...

- I respect him... He respects me. We have strengths in common, and areas that one or the other of us is stronger. He can visualize how something is put together... from a car to a building structure, etc... On the other hand - he couldn't wire together a home audio/video system without a lot of work... for me that's easy. He's a great cook for a lot of dinner type dishes - I've got breakfast and baking down pat. I'm a great kitchen clean up person... We're on the same page 80% of the time on local issues - and are both involved in our community advocating and volunteering on community improvements... sometimes he's the frontman, sometimes I am.

We're on the same page with earning/spending/kid rearing. When we do disagree on kid stuff we present a united front until we can hash out our differences outside of the kids hearing...

 

[joeea]

What works for the success of your marriage?

We are celebrating 40 years this year. They haven't all been bliss, but I wouldn't trade any of them.

I was extremely lucky that I found someone who viewed the world the same way I did (financially and otherwise) and who was willing to put up with me for the long haul. I am lucky enough to be married to my best friend.

We both worked hard, did without when necessary, but always enjoyed life along the way.

I've been retired a few years and she is currently planning to retire next year.

We are both looking forward to the next phase of our lives together. Life is good.

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

13 years of marriage, together for close to 20. Our keys:

Putting up with each other's crap. That's kind of a crude way of putting it but I'm not perfect and she's not perfect. And sometimes it's as simple as just being able to accept, if not embrace, each other's faults sometimes.

Solid financial foundation. Both having reasonable paying jobs and not being too heavy of spenders helped provide us with a stable financial footing right off the bat so money didn't become a common source of friction.

Sharing similar core values and the majority of goals. It helps we're on the same page on things but we do have some friction when some of our goals aren't aligned. This is also one of the largest risks IMO because if you're with
someone for so long, I don't see it being outside the realm of possibility for your values and goals to potentially diverge over time.

 

[Midpack]

We've been married for 38 years, and we've been lucky in that it's impossible to know who may drift apart over a lifetime. We're alike in some ways, but complimentary in others. We do a lot together, but we both have some activities and friends not in common. I think it's healthier that we have lives and identities of our own (as well as together).

Two adages come to mind:

“Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.”

'To have a great spouse/partner/friend, you have to be a great spouse/partner/friend.' (paraphrasing)

 

[Winemaker]

35, this November.

Ya only get out of it what ya put in to it.

 

[JoeWras]

I think letting the partner drive sometimes helps.

She always lets me drive the remote control. Very important. She's come to like some of my programs.

I've let her drive some of our concert choices. Currently, some classical. I hate classical. Oh wait... No I don't! I've come to like it!