How to Stay Married for at Least Twenty-five Years
“A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short,” according to French essayist and author Andrew Maurois in his 1942 memoir. But this is still true even though most twenty-first century relationships seem like brief emails rather than long conversations.
August 2018 marks thirty years since I met my husband Glenn, so our long conversation is still a work in progress. We met on a job interview when I took a job for an LA music manager. Glenn was using an office in the manager’s suite to finish writing a novel inspired by his years as a rock and roll roadie. I’d just ended a brief but intense romance and had sworn off relationships for a while when I took this new job. Ironically, I found love anyway as our paths suddenly crossed.
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Glenn had just returned to LA after building a house for a friend in Oregon and getting divorced from a ten-year marriage. He spent those years mostly on the road touring with superstar bands like The Stones and Elton John while his first wife stayed home in Pennsylvania buying antiques with his paychecks. Although it took him ten years to leave the marriage, which he admits was doomed from the start, it hadn’t soured him on long-term relationships. In turn, I’d survived a series of live-in relationships and short-term romances.
Our long conversation began during my first week on the job as we discovered significant things in common: we’re both writers and we were both seeking long-term attachments rather than just romantic love. When Glenn moved in with me a week after we met, it felt easy and comfortable. Nearly thirty years later, it still does.
When we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I asked my friends who also had long-relationship friends what has kept them together to see if what’s worked for us was also what worked for them. Here’s what I learned:
1. Keep each other laughing
Glenn’s boyish sense of humor keeps me laughing even when he doesn’t intend to. When he tries to make me laugh on purpose, it’s usually to lighten me up when I’m angry or when I think he should do something “my” way. Telling bad jokes works in a pinch, but good jokes work even better.
2. Create new traditions together
Glenn and I got married on Chinese New Year in 1979, so we celebrate our anniversary on Chinese New Year, even though the date changes each year. We got married at a Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills with a dozen friends in attendance, so our anniversary tradition is to eat at a different Asian restaurant each year.
Our first anniversary required us to get Chinese take-out, however, as our daughter Risa had just been born. On our tenth and twentieth anniversaries, we invited all of our friends to bring their favorite Chinese take-out and had amazing feasts. On our twenty-fifth anniversary, a dozen friends joined us at our favorite neighborhood Chinese place, which was like our wedding even though all of our friends had changed. This family tradition makes our anniversaries special and is lots of fun. Finding your own family traditions that go beyond the usual holiday events gives you something special to look forward to each year and creates happy memories.
3. Identify your “deal breakers”
In every relationship, there are differences of opinion. But not every difference is a “deal breaker”—that’s something you absolutely can’t live with. Since marriage is actually a business deal of sorts, knowing what your deal breakers are can save a lot of frustration, as they’re things you won’t compromise on to save the “deal,” no matter what.
Deal breakers are different for each person and each relationship. For example, infidelity can be a deal breaker for some but it may not be a deal breaker for others, depending on the circumstances. By identifying your deal breakers, you can relax and won’t make mountains out of molehills, as well as sense when it’s time to change or leave the deal.
4. Put up with small annoyances (or guilt your partner into changing them)
Glenn and I both hate washing dishes, but he’s much better at it than I am. His mother taught him and his three brothers how to help around the house while mine never made me do chores, so I avoid washing dishes like the plague when I see that the sink is full. This of course drives him nuts. When he finally complains about it enough, I feel so guilty that I wash my dishes as soon as I use them … at least for a while.
In turn, it drives me nuts when Glenn leaves his shoes in the middle of the living room since I usually trip over them in the dark. But, instead of complaining, I just move them. When he does this frequently, however, I put his shoes on his side of the bed. This helps him remember not to leave them in the middle of the floor, at least for a while. So, we’ve learned to cope with the small annoyances, as well as how to gently alert each other when “enough is enough.”
5. Be more considerate of your partner than your friends
I don’t do this as much as I should, but my friend Judy—who has lived with her boyfriend Bill for over thirty years on a farm in Mendocino with no electricity or running water—says this is the key to their long relationship. She wonders why people treat those they live with and love with less consideration than people they only see occasionally.
This is logical, but contrary to human nature, it seems. Most of us don’t treat the people we love with as much respect as people we barely know but want to impress. When I treat Glenn badly, Judy’s advice comes to mind and helps me apologize and change my responses, since Glenn is one of the two most important people in my life.
6. Stay independent while being together
The key to our marriage, I believe, is that Glenn and I give each other a lot of freedom in addition to having things in common. For example, we’ve kept our finances separate except for one joint savings account. So, we’re not overly concerned about what the other spends or earns, as long as we each stay responsible for our finances. We also help the other out whenever one of us has a cash flow crunch.
In addition, we each have friends and activities that are separate from the other. But we don’t feel left out or jealous since we appreciate the time we can spend together, which is never enough. Most of our together time is spent traveling, and we look forward to having more time for that in future years. Maintaining our individual freedoms actually keeps us together as we don’t have to separate to do things we want that the other doesn’t enjoy.
7. Keep evolving in mind, body, and spirit
While we don’t always grow at the same rate, Glenn and I have each continued to evolve over the decades. We read a lot, take and teach classes, and remain committed to living interesting lives. As we’ve continued to grow, we haven’t grown apart. So continuing to experience new things together and separately keeps us interesting to each other, and also to ourselves.
8. Be there for each other in tough times
When our parents became ill a few years ago, we were there for each other through the crises, both practical and emotional. Knowing we could rely on each other as we put our parents into nursing homes made all the difference when Glenn’s dad got cancer and my parents both had strokes. When our fathers each passed away, we realized we could count on each other in our final years together. After nearly thirty years, that means more than almost anything else in a relationship and is priceless.
As Andre Maurois also said, “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.” The glue between the bricks of this edifice can be forged by doing some of the things noted above. If you keep laughing and growing together, your long conversation will definitely feel too short if it ever ends.