This Marriage Thing

I have been married 26 years. No one thought we would last. I believe the main ingredient for wedded bliss is 'respect'. And, a close second needs to be an active, loving sex life. I have kept my man by being a chef in the kitchen, an immaculate housekeeper and a whore in the bedroom.

Sometimes it is just easier to stay.. I would love to divorce because my husband is an alcoholic and not very nice person. But i have not worked in 18 years. And when you have 25+ years together so much has accumulated financially and it can be nasty..

For me and many other women, leaving would mean living poor, or worse..

Also for me, this is all I have known for 25 years. He is all I have known....And yes, the fear of change.. But I have left him 2x and did ok, barely. But I had to live in dumps.

John and I have been married for 20 years. Partly due to the love we share, partly due to finances, partly due to our seven kids who would fight to all stay with me probably...Not that I haven't thought about leaving from time to time...I think he prolly has too...but it's just a thought like "hmmm...wonder what it would be like to go stay in my own apartment where no one drinks my fancy tea or eats my chocolate I have hidden.." Sometimes he pees me off and I wonder what it would be like on my own...but then I get to thinking of spiders and pickle jars and seeing him in public with another woman, and I come back to my senses knowing how much I really do love him and don't want to lose him...even if he's a jerk sometimes. I prolly am too at times...we get along because we both see our own faults and correct them within days. Maybe that's the trick right there..humbleness.

Being humble makes one a servent, and although I know a lot of folks will get their fur riled up, I still believe the Bible has it layed out. The whole plan for marriage to work, and anything really, is for us ALL to become humble servents of each other...and then no one gets hurt if everybody is doing their job right. Pride has no place in marriage, work, or other.

I think many, if not most marriages have a situation in which one or both partners become ambivalent about whether to remain committed to the marriage. They can then choose to divorce, recommit to the marriage, or live together as roommates in an uncommitted marriage. What typically triggers ambivalence is dissatisfaction with the relationship. Just as the stock market has major changes that are called "corrections", marriages have points in which there needs to be a change so that the relationship becomes mutually satisfactory.

My marriage has survived because we have both been willing to make changes so that the other partner finds more satisfaction in the relationship. That is commitment for me.

My long marriage is a result of love. At the beginning we loved each other and begain a family they were wonderful years. We loved each other then and I think we love each other even more now because the children are grown and we are together more since my husband and myself are both on disability. We do things now and go places that we couldn't do or go at the beginning of our marriage because we started having children the first year of our marriage. Our love for each other is very strong and continue to get stronger each day that passes. We notice the love we have for each other more now than when our children were younger because all of our attention went to our children. Today we give each other more attention since our children are grown.

Wow.

This has got to be the #1 best question I've ever heard asked about modern marriage. I don't have an answer for you or even a good reflection from a marriage I've witnessed. I'm going to learn from what I read on this one thanks for asking it.

I also think this is a really great question, and I wish I had an answer. There has never been a divorce in my family history. Grandparents married 60 and 40 years, and parents married 55 years, 'til death did they part. My 2 brothers' and my sister's marriages have lasted (so far) between 25 and 34 years. I got married late in life so it's only been 20 years for us so far. Everyone touts compatability and kids are the best predictors of a marriage's longevity. My wife and I have almost no interests in common, so we probably don't meet most people's definition of "compatable" but we have something that I think is more important than compatability, respect. We respect our differences. We don't like the same food, one of us is 15 years older than the other, one of us is from Chicago, the other from West Virginia, one of drives a Toyota, the other drives a truck, one of us is a liberal Democrat, the other is a conservative Republican, one of loves to travel, the other doesn't like to leave the house and is afraid to fly. We weren't even the same religion when we met. We don't expect each other to think and act alike. We're not the Bobbsey twins. We're two unique human beings with different opinions, different views, and different likes and dislikes. Vive le difference!

We also do not have any kids (although we've had a lot of fun trying over the years)! So, I pose the following follow-up question: How many long marriages are there out there without kids? And if you do have kids, would your marriage have survived if you had not been so blessed?