What’s My Secret to 52 Years of Marriage?
Yes, you read that right. I agree that the number 52 stands out like a sore thumb. Some even say that we are a dying breed. Most people raise an eyebrow or two in surprise followed by asking what’s our secret.
You may be wondering the same thing.
Before I attempt to answer that very common question, let me add to your shock and awe. Neither one of us have been married before.
Yeah, I know.
My husband and I married right out of high school. We’d both just turned nineteen. We met on Valentine’s Day and were married on the first day of May. Yep, two and a half months later.
Are you still breathing?
I had just left the religious cult I’d been raised in which resulted in me being disowned by my birth family. I had no money, no job, no civilian friends, no car, no driver’s license, and no experience.
I bet you thought things couldn’t get worse.
Little sidenote … My husband and I had first met years ago as children. I spent a few weeks during the summer with my grandparents and they lived across the street from him. We hung out. You know — played games like covered wagon days and cowboys. He was in love with me even then or so he tells me.
Cute, right?
Then there was this huge gap of about nine years when we didn’t see each other because my dad became a christian radical and started his own cult, forcing the family to live in a closed society in order to protect us from a sinful world.
Whew! sorry about that long sentence, but let’s continue. Shall we?
Because if you’re reading this, even if you go to church, my parents would’ve considered you to be one of the great unwashed. Their little group of followers were the only ones on the right path.
Okay. Back to the greatest love story …
So… my husband and I were reunited and the rest is history. We were married and had our first child nine months and six days later. Relax. I was a virgin when we got married. We must have been extremely fertile, I guess. Trust me, I’m fully aware that I may have been the last virgin standing. Can we move on, please.
Roll the clock forward to today, 52 years later, and we’re still together.
What happened in between getting hitched and today is a long, sometimes weird, often boring, and occasionally entertaining story, but suffice it to say, we’re still together.
So what’s our secret to a long marriage? Well, get ready for it. Are you ready?
WE STAYED.
It was that easy and that hard.
We had a lot of growing up to do. We had to learn almost everything about anything after we got married. My husband’s parents had no useful advice. My parents were a hindrance. We struggled to dig ourselves out of poverty. My husband lost jobs that were sent overseas. I went to college while raising a baby. I had no examples to follow because there were no women in my family or my husband’s who had attended college, let alone established a career.
We built our home, literally.
We lived in it while building it. Fun times! We raised two kids and sent both of them to college. I became an elementary teacher and later a principal of a large school in rural Maine. We worked all day and came home to care for the kids and dogs. No family members were available or willing to babysit. We didn’t get date night or mom and dad time until our kids were grown. We almost lost our eldest in a car accident.
That’s life, well, that was our life at any rate.
I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that most life stories are a mixture of the good, bad, and the ugly. Staying alive is one thing. Thriving is something altogether different.
It was hard. It was exhausting. But we stayed.
Not that there weren’t good times. There were lots of good times. Our kids were/are pretty special. We lucked out. My husband and I had similar goals about money. Money is a big problem for a lot of couples. If one’s a spender and the other is a saver, look out. We also viewed the world similarly. We’re both introverts. We love nature and the notion of off-grid living. We have enough in common that we were able to make things work with a few major adjustments and minor tweaks.
Still, it wasn’t all roses.
We went through several rough periods, often brought on by extenuating circumstances, hard work, and lack of family support. Our son’s car accident almost broke me.
Yet, we stayed.
For us, staying was what one did. Leaving was a last resort. And, if truth be told, our parent’s and grandparent’s generation modeled this behavior for us. Divorce simply wasn’t a common practice back in the good old days. You stayed.
In fact, most organized religions heavily disapproved of divorce.
You might say that back in the day divorce was the number one sin that priests, preachers, and the government railed against, prohibited, or made difficult to do by passing laws limiting a couple’s options. People were shamed, especially divorced women, and discouraged from leavng their partners. It wasn't easy for women to earn a living and many had a passel of kids.
For most of human history people stayed because that’s just how things were back in the good old days.
So, I think I was definitely a throwback to days gone by. My parents were deathly opposed to divorce. They considered remarriage after a divorce to be adultry. Their steady diet of indoctrination influenced me long after I left home. It took me years to get the god virus out of my brain.
I’m free of it today, thankfully.
Yet, I stayed. And, here’s the interesting conclusion to this unusual story. My husband and I are willingly together today. We’re not together because we feel obligated, or because I can’t earn a living, or because we think it would be a sin to divorce.
We’re together today because we choose to stay.
We’ve made the choice to stay over and over again throughout the last 52 years. And, I’m pretty confident that we’re going to be together until death do us part. If he gets sick and needs someone to care for him, it’s going to be me and vice versa. We’re committed. We’re family.
He’s the family I never had.
We’ve a shared history of ups and downs, challenges and victories, children and a grandchild, disappointments and joy, poverty and financial stability, celebrations and bone-crushing work, irritation and fun, bad choices and smart thinking, misunderstandings and shared perspectives.
So where does love come into this story, you ask?
Love exists but it ain’t like in the fairy tales. That’s a cultural lie, one of hundreds. Love is more about holding someone’s hair back when they vomit into the toilet than it is about having wild passionate sex on the kitchen table. I think I could’ve convinced almost anyone to have kitchen-table sex with me, but finding someone who’d hold my hair back from my face when I’m vomiting into the toilet, well, he’s a keeper.
Leaving is an option.
It’s a good option, too. I’m glad preachers, priests and the government stopped prohibiting divorce. People should leave if they want or need to do so. It’s a choice and we all live with the consequences of our own choices.
We stayed. It was that easy and that hard.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find here books on Amazon.
