When Don and I had been married about three years – this would have been 1993 or so – I was introduced to a young woman who happened to mention she was engaged. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "You're going to love being married! It's the best kept secret in the world!"
She looked startled, then relieved. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear that," she confessed. "Everyone's been telling me how terrible it would be, how I'd start to resent the old ball and chain."
(For the record, it drives me nuts when people tell this kind of stuff to a bride.)
Fast-forward to yesterday, when I saw this meme (pardon the language):
Don and I are coming up on our 35th wedding anniversary this year, and I still think marriage is the best-kept secret in the world. After all, there's a whole other person in our house, and he loves me. How cool is that?
I loved being married and others envied me how great my relationship was. Till one day the midlife crisis hit...sigh.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why a person would say something like that to a happy person.
ReplyDeleteWe celebrated our forty-second anniversary this week.
ReplyDeleteI think we're sort of on t
ReplyDeletehe cusp between very distinct generations of people. My grandparents and the others in their generation went on to celebrate long aniversaries. The 50 year mark was normal. It was also normal to marry young, attend and raise your family in church. Knowing your neighbors and being there for them was normal. It was normal for families to live near each other. Normal to have a backyard garden if not a small farm in the country near a small town. People didn't have the same expectations as now and stuck together through thick or thin.
Now divorce is normal.
Not knocking careers per se, but it's become the primary goal taught children so often nowadays, over finding a loving spouse and having a family. Then careers relocate people all over God's creation with little rhyme or reason to individual lives, or family lives. Sometimes that works out, but more often contributes to problems that are hard to overcome. Especially seeking self serving goals first.
Everything is not etched in stone about happy, successful families.
A lot of wisdom in the Bible isn't spelled out but has to be observed.
Like cities.
Many cities and towns were named for the family that founded their settlement. That's a very healthy type of congregant living for people of faith with family values and a lot of our small towns go back to that model. Other places are man made and man planned and don't tend toward God's plan, sort of like Babylon.
I think rural, small town life is far better for family life than cities.
In Psychlogy 101, required when I started college, one of the first things we were taught was about an experiment with mice. The more mice in the same environment, the more bad behaviors were exhibited. The more strange sexual behaviors came out. And the more they multiplied in that crowded environment the worse it got. The point was made to us young freshmen in college that people were the same way. I'll bet this is not still being taught like it was 50 years ago.
Many of us feel the Lord's return is coming soon. Part of that is that things have gone so far downhill it was almost too much to hope for that our society could be turned around. That hope brought forth this new administration to tackle the job. It's going to take a lot of prayer on our part because people are flawed and make mistakes. But hope for our future and the hope for our children to succed in family life is being renewed.
One of my prayers has been answered regarding our new adminisrrat0ion in that " going forward, a scalpel instead of a hatchet will be used." I'm so glad our President has decided a more careful approach to cutting out waste. If only we could get back the money from years and years of graft and corruption.
for sure different time and thoughts, we were taught treat other how you wan to be treated now its me me me, and who cares if someone worked for it I should be given it
DeleteTBH, my grandparents were married for 56 years and they kinda hated each other. My parents were married for 53 years and were very happy. Length doesn't necessarily imply happiness. My ex is now divorcing the trash he left me for. Trash gonna trash.
ReplyDeleteafter44 years, I agree Patrice If you find the right one
ReplyDeleteOur 42 anniversary is this coming week. They said it would never last since there was an eleven year age difference, all those nay syaers are dead or divorced. Ha.
ReplyDeleteMy dear husband and I will be celebrating our 65th wedding anniversary this coming April...we are both 85. My father would have nothing to do with the wedding but my sweet grandpa walked me down the aisle. My father didn't think we knew what love was and that he couldn't agree to a doomed marriage. He repented of his beliefs and gave a sizable gift early in our marriage and happily made the 3 hour trip often to visit us and excitedly looked forward to our visits.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and i have been together on a daily basis for 13 years since he had a stroke and never let a day go by without saying we love each other and mean it.
Wishing you many more years of happiness.
Ramona in NC
Reckon it depends on who you marry, and how you run it.
ReplyDeleteHubby and I will celebrate 24 years next week. There were some bad years where we tried to run it the way we were TOLD to, instead of the way that worked for us.
We stuck out the bad years, we learned.