Love for the Long Haul
The third installment in the Season of Love on Second Cup with Lynn and Nancy.
For Nancy and me, long marriages are our stories. My husband, John, and I just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Yes, we married young, but not that young. It’s been a long time since we've been together, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Nancy and her husband, Tom, are just a year and a month behind us, so next summer they will celebrate 40 years of marriage as well.
The other day, someone asked me if I had one word of advice on a long marriage, and I said “Commit.” You’ve got to mean to stay, and barring emotional or physical harm, do everything in your power to do just that.
This is not everyone's story and it doesn't mean it's the best story. It just happens to be our story. And just know that if this is not your story, we honor it and understand everyone's path is a little bit different. Recently I went out to lunch with a bunch of ladies from my neighborhood. It's a very social group out here where I live, and they're just lovely. And since it was close to my anniversary, I just started asking some questions. How did you meet your husband and how long have you been married? Best marriage advice.? And one thing I learned afresh is just how different everyone's story is.
So what struck me is the stories of how people met and how exceptional they are. And I wondered what was the unusual thing about the way Nancy met Tom. Nancy shared, “Well, what's unusual about it, and it played out really throughout our 38 years, is that I'm a native Floridian. I'm from Florida. Tom's from Illinois, and he’s very Midwestern. And when we met, I was living in Ohio, he was in Illinois, and we actually met in Indiana. So what's kind of unusual is that we were living in two different states, met in a third, and then little did he know that I was just very Floridian in the way I think and always wantied to come back here, which ultimately we have.”
The most unusual thing about when I met John, which was when we were in college, was that we actually lived across the street from each other, but we had never met. And then we met in a city that was away from where we went to school. It got me thinking that it is just all kind of magical. It's very serendipitous. And in the Christian worldview that Nancy and I have - mysterious in the way God moves and leads us to be together.
Even in the mundane days, there is a little bit of magic, but not it’s not always magical. We consume a lot of media that tells us it should be perfect and exciting. We saw Top Gun Maverick movie, and so you think your relationship should be something like Tom Cruise comes back from a day spent flying fighter jets, and then you take them out on the sailboat and you look like Jennifer Conley and your sweater tied around your shoulders and the sun's setting behind you and every day should just be like that. But it's really not.
That's just true of any part of our life. There's a lot of routine and mundane and functioning and interacting, especially in marriage. Right now Tom and Nancy are in a season of both working remotely and they work a large part of the day in the same room. Their desks actually face one another. If it gets to be 5:30 in the afternoon, they might ask “Are you done?” And the other says, “Yes,” and then they go to dinner or something. So ordinary as is much of life, but at least for right now it's working and they are making the most of it. Sometimes we do have to be aware of the influence of social media and recalibrate our expectations.
This long haul of being married is a marathon, not a sprint. And in a marathon at the start, everyone's excited and cheering and very optimistic about how the race is going to go. And there are points when that you reach this runner's high and everything feels great. But there are also just those points where you hit a hill. There's a hill in the Boston Marathon called Heartbreak Hill. Sometimes you're just tired and you just need a drink of water and you need to rest. And I think it's kind of a good analogy for what our really long happy marriages are happy over the long haul. But there are times when it's just really either mundane or even really hard.
Now, I'm not a marathoner. And five miles has been Nancy’s longest to date. Still impressive! But she doesn’t just go out and run five miles. She had to train. Build up from a 5k to a 5-mile race. That's true of investing training into our marriage. How am I supposed to know how to live with another human being and to deal with conflict, to kind of know when to stand up and when to yield? The personal dynamics are rather expansive, aren’t they? Workshops, counseling, books, asking older mentors, seeking wisdom. Find help and guidance. Put the effort in early on.
Doesn't it hurt when you run? And the answer is absolutely, it hurts. It always hurts. And we expect it to hurt because who goes out and runs five miles and just one morning? So is living with another person, sacrificially, and giving and considering the needs of someone. I mean, all of these kinds of things are going to stretch us. And sometimes it could hurt because my partner's not perfect.
Back to my ladies’ luncheon, I was asking for marriage advice at my luncheon today. And someone shared that the best advice she heard came from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court Justice, who famously said, “Sometimes I just pretend to be deaf.” Sometimes I just need to let things go. I've learned, we've learned to recognize what matters, what's important, what is okay to let go. And I find that when I am focusing on the minutiae, the little things that annoy me, I need to maybe take a reset, maybe there's a pebble in my shoe, or I haven't had enough water, or I need an energy bar or something.
Knowing ourselves is essential. Nancy shared that she’s aware that when stressed she becomes critical, and who can be on the receiving end of that? It's Mr. Schneider. So she has learned to recognize that in herself, and he recognizes that as well. Part of training is better understanding of yourself and what your pressure points are, what those triggers can be, and then being honest about it and discussing that. It works both ways.
Keep laughing together, finding things that are funny, finding ourselves funny. When I can laugh at myself, that's the best way to get past a little rough patch in the road. Nancy agreed and during the course of our conversation shared, ‘ One of my top three things that I love most about my husband is his humor, his sense of humor and our shared laughter. I do think it's essential. Life's just too heavy. So we need to fight for the joy.”
Indeed.
Fight for the joy.
POINTS OF GRATITUDE
I am grateful for my husband of forty years, and his commitment to give his very best.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:
If you’re in a long-term relationship, what is a one-word key to success?
Mystery? Magic? or Serendipity? How do you describe things you can’t explain?
What helps you fight for the joy when life is heavy?