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25 years and super happy. Part of it for me is just committing to making it successful and to work through anything that would be remotely tough. Also - some compromise on things is okay - have that as a mantra. Just be okay with that because it’s so worth it. Lastly (and my wife is amazing) but we agreed as we had kids to still focus on us as being the central part of the family - so that was job one for us and the kids felt actually more secure with that foundation (vs. over-pivoting to just the kids). There are still disagreements and interesting times, but we both know we can work through anything. Sorry if preachy - but just so grateful.
That’s awesome! I think being number one before kids is essential.
Married 24 years and the way we've made it work is by being honest without being disrespectful, share similar likes and pick your battles (not every disagreement requires a debate, so you learn to compromise). At the end of the day, both of you have to have things that both of you like to do together and you need to be a team. I have her back and I know she has mine (saw her once stand behind a guy that was arguing with me, holding a bat and ready to tee his head off if he would've taken a swing at me). Not only I love my wife, but love to hang out with her. Hope this helps.
ups and downs my friend. and you just need to ride them.
Amen to that, just had our 22 year anniversary.
It will be 25 years next year and we have two boys. I see good advice from others.
Apart from all that, keep the romance going. Grocery shopping is my responsibility in my house and I try to buy flowers for her every time. Nothing fancy just few flowers. I heard her brag about it so many times. By the way, I learnt it from my dad.
Show that you care. My wife will try to have a simple meal ready whenever I get home after a road trip. Especially if it is on a Thursday. I appreciate this a lot, nothing like a home cooked meal after eating out 3 or 4 days in a row. Gives us a chance to eat together if it is early enough.
Communication, just like at work, is the key. As I have gotten older I communicate lot more than I used to, I think it helped in maturing the relationship.
It has not been perfect, I now know that you have to work at it to make it perfect.
Married 13 years, have six kids, my spouse is my best friend and greatest source of strength. We hit a rough patch a couple years ago but worked through it and our relationship is healthier than it has ever been.
In my experience, long-term relationships take work, but there are 5 key enablers of a healthy relationship:
1. Both partners have to want it to work
2. Common goals
3. Commitment to putting in effort to help each other be happy
4. Trust
5. Flexibility
1. Both partners have to want it to work. It's a friendship and a partnership (especially when you bring in kids).
2. Common goals. Both partners need to want compatible lives. Obviously individual goals will vary, but the big things need to at least be compatible. Everybody has different views on what "big" but in my experience it usually comes down to money, time, family, and external relationships. If there is something you value as much as these, it belongs in this category. It makes a relationship much easier if both parties have compatible views on their "big" issues. Compatible does not mean reluctant agreement. Compatible means both parties are HAPPY with the way the big issues are handled. Making it work when there are disagreements on the big issues is very difficult.
3. Commitment to putting in effort to help each other be happy. Everybody has different things that help them feel happy. Everybody has times when they could use a boost from a friend to feel happier and get through the hard time.
4. Trust. You have to trust your partner and be trustworthy. Broken trust is very difficult to recover from and doing so may require almost super-human patience and commitment to rebuilding trust.
5. Flexibility. After you have trust, agreement on goals, and compatibility on big issues, don't sweat the small stuff. You don't get to have pet-peeves, you just have to get over it. Having a pet-peeve implies you think your way is better or right. That is arrogant and obstructive in a relationship. If you find it bothering you a lot, there's a good chance there is another issue in the relationship causing you to have less patience. If a relationship is healthy you should have enough good feelings to overlook minute annoyances.
In a top 10 most expensive city in the world. Good job with good salary but money and time is tight. My wife puts in about as many hours as I do just keeping the kids clean, clothed, and where they need to be. Cleanliness is first to go.
I think genuinely wanting to be the best version of yourself and loving each other. We are constantly looking to grow and improve as individuals. Also learning to look internally at yourself and putting the ego aside is a big factor in loving another person.
Do they have kids?
There are a couple of things, I think.
Remember why you got married in the first place. What drew you two together. What are the traits you admire/adore. If your base is solid then you can ride out the invariable troughs.
But also acknowledge that people change over time. The person you are today will not be the same person in 5/10 years. Same with your spouse. Realize and play off those changes. Use them to the advantage of the relationship.
And respect. If the respect goes from either side, there's little hope to save anything else.
Coming from someone going on 12 years of marriage and wouldn't want it any other way.
Remember why you got married in the first place. Thanks D1. After 10 years of marriage and 3 kids I don’t spend enough time remembering how we got here. I still remember the warm summer night where I knew this young girl with big eyes would be my wife some day. Some day very soon. I felt a small chill down my spine maybe from the breeze, maybe from her father’s shotgun to my head.. yada yada yada.. here we are today. Married 10 years.
12 years together, 10 years married.
1. First decide if you’re truly aligned in what you want and need out of life and each other. For us, it’s having similar values about how we spend our money (travel, friends, family) and where we put our efforts (art, community and making the world slightly better than we left it).
2. Think and talk deeply about what you want out of your relationship. Usually that means clear communication, self-work to get through our own baggage, and trust in each other. It also takes clearly articulating where your boundaries with each other and others are. This book is really helpful in that for us, so we could both ask for and get what we need from each other and others. https://www.amazon.com/Designer-Relationships-Monogamy-Polyamory-Optimistic/dp/1627781471 (For us, that’s also been an open marriage where we’re central/primary and have other outlets for friendship/love/intimacy, which could be an entirely different post)
3. Find a great therapist who supports you (individually and together) and has aligned values. Long-term relationships are hard work, and we can only do them as well as the models we see around us and what we’ve learned on our own. As a society we have a stigma about hiring someone else to consult on our brains and loves, yet have no issues with hiring a personal trainer for our physical well-being or taking cooking lessons for a cuisine we didn’t grow up with. Our therapist has been an excellent neutral referee to help us pause in tough times and narrate the undercurrent of tough conversations we couldn’t see. We see ours about 2-3x a year usually when we have major life changes coming up, though there was about a year where we were biweekly visitors to work hard through some mismatched needs and circumstances.
3. Be intentional about spending time together that’s only about being kind and generous to each other (not doing the laundry or multitasking on household planning). Do things that nourish and delight your partner even when (perhaps especially, from time to time) they aren’t your love language. Dr. Gottman’s theory of “bids” was really helpful for us in this realm https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-Work/dp/0553447718. Sometimes my partner goes to the opera with me though it’s not his thing, sometimes I go running with him though I hate it because it makes him happy. Be kind always, and apologize when you’re not able to be.
4. Decide what’s important and let other things go. My partner runs an amazing nonprofit that does good in the world, praises me openly to everyone, and has made progress on things like taking on equal domestic work. He does dozens of things that annoy the heck out of me, but ultimately I can walk away from or ignore if they don’t deeply affect to me. Choosing which things to raise is really important- leaving socks on the floor on his side of the room until laundry day or leaving the toilet seat up aren’t worth my time and energy to engage, but driving in a way I feel is too risky means I offer/insist to drive when we’re together. There is no perfect person, but someone who will work with and for you is crucial.
5. Take care of and listen to yourself. If you lose yourself it’s hard to have a compass on others and the rest of the world. I’m an introvert and love that work travel gives me time to recenter and be just myself. We’ve had a standing agreement since the beginning that if our relationship ever started being harmful or ill-fitting for one or both of us long term, we should love each other enough to let it go. That has helped us stay true to ourselves and know this isn’t a “white knuckle through forever even if it sucks” situation. It’s “does this temporarily suck, or do I no longer fit with this person?” which makes it a choice to stay together every day and month and year.
6. Expect both partners to be humans and fail sometimes. Pay closer attention to how you recover, make amends, and heal. Esther Perel’s work is a beautiful template here. https://www.estherperel.com/podcast (her books Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs are also excellent reading for long term relationships).
*A bonus for us has been switching who has been the primary earner multiple times (something we have privilege/education/support to do, not all others may). It has given us both perspective on domestic/workforce stresses and helped us be empathetic to each other when someone doesn’t do the dishes right away or a work deadline runs over date night occasionally.
Good luck and I wish you amazing love and a wonderful journey ❤️
If you’re not a burner, please come next year ❤️
I’m not married but I think it’s the ability to work things out when the going gets tough. No one is perfect but those who are making it through know that they don’t have to be perfect.
Be kind under pressure
30 years and adding my thoughts
There will be up and downs. Yes, there will be times that you won’t be happy. For me the keys are to manage your own expectations to a realistic level. And when they aren’t met, be dedicated to being dedicated. You will have the opportunity to end it, the couples that stay together are dedicated to staying together.
38 years of marriage plus 6 years of on and off dating in high school. Met at 13 and 16, married at 19 and 22. Lots of ups and downs. 2 Sons, 33 & 31. Now 5 grandchildren. Grew up and grew closer not apart thankfully. Just had common goals, family, financially, and spiritually. Committed to staying together, providing for our sons as best we could, now our grandchildren, and preparing for early retirement. Traveling helps now! 😉
It takes two to get the marriage working, you alone cannot follow tips n tricks. Agree to disagree. Understand that you need spouse, not them (may be she/he needs too, but that’s not your business)
16 years chiming in.
Make sure that you're happy with the person you're with when most of the passion is removed from the equation. Also, be willing to adjust as your partner adjusts over time.
It may sound odd, but you're going to be with a different person over the long term as they grow and mature, not just the one at the moment you get married.
Fight the early signs of rudeness. When you treat each other with respect and don’t get too comfortable, much easier to work through issues. And there is no relationship without issues. So comes down to ability to deal with them.
Remember wife is always right..
*remember your partner is always at least part right, and likely so are you. Now figure out how to work together to sort the rest.
1. Both partners have to want it to work. It's a friendship and a partnership (especially when you bring in kids).
2. Common goals. Both partners need to want compatible lives. Obviously individual goals will vary, but the big things need to at least be compatible. Everybody has different views on what "big" but in my experience it usually comes down to money, time, family, and external relationships. If there is something you value as much as these, it belongs in this category. It makes
 you do realize you’re asking the worst focus group?
Just saying. I’m sorry my colleagues and my friends but we have a higher percentage of divorce and a higher percentage of bad relationships as  consultants...“Our making it work” is surviving
That’s exactly why I’m asking this group D4 - to see how a subset of a group potentially prone to marital issues makes it work, in spite of the challenges that come with this line of work.
My wife and I have been married for twelve years. With my travel and two kids, one of whom
has special needs, it has not been easy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. One thing we do each year is visit an exotic country together as a couple while my in-laws watch the kids—if you are able to do this with kids I highly recommend it