One talk, different marriages

Recently I gave a talk called "The Secrets of Happily Married Couples" to an audience of about ten couples at a small, but luxurious, Pocono resort known as The Lodge at Woodloch. As is typically the case in these spa lectures, the talks tend to be intimate and can get very in depth. All but three of the couples had children who were between the ages of five and seventeen. One of the other couples, still in their 20s, had been married for two years; two other couples, I would guess, had been married about thirty years.

It became clear to me, as the group chimed in with questions and began to describe their own experiences, that I couldn't lump together "marriage" in a way that would mean the same thing for everyone in my audience. To the young childless couple marriage may represent a world of boundless possibilities, mutual giving, satisfying long walks and quite moments of reflection. To the family with school age children, marriage means dealing with heavy work loads outside the home compounded by the strains of rearing kids. They may be working through compromises on everything from whether the children should be permitted to sleep over at a friend's home, to whether they should be allowed to quit piano lessons. The couples with adult children seemed to take all this in, and hardly seemed ruffled by the struggles of their younger attendees.

Although a small sample, I was impressed with how this group represented three phases of marriage, and highlighting the unique challenges that face a marriage with children in the home. The take home message from watching these couples is that many marriages (I would venture to say almost EVERY marriage) begin in a blissful phase, and then undergo stages of extreme duress. But at the tail end of this experience are those calmer, long-married couples who have managed to raise a family and push though the tough times, and to come out feeling great not only about the outcome, but about the fact that they got there together!

Remember, the success of the long-married couples wasn't due to good luck, and wasn't because their marriage was any less troubled than average, it's that they stuck it out and learned from each other (and demonstrated to their children) how to have a great marriage.