Today, as it turns out, is our wedding anniversary. We are now firmly into the mid-30's.
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Wedding anniversaries are interesting things.
If you were to consult your local InterWeb search page, you would find that 58% of couples that were married in the 1990's are still married (42% divorce rate), so already the odds are not great to make it this far. This is reflected in my own circle of acquaintances: many of my friends, including some of my most significant (The Director, La Contessa, Uisdean Ruadh) divorced from their first marriage. It is not that any of them were at fault; it is just the way that it happened.
(Interestingly, the same statistics claim that people married in the 2000's and beyond are more likely to be married. One wonders if that is due to the fact that they simply have not racked up enough years yet).
I suppose if you were to interview those marriages that ended, the stories run the gamut: people changed, a bad match to start out with which did not improve, really bad things (fortunately I know directly of none of those stories in my group), people were bored, they needed to find themselves, etc. In that sense to me it is an odd thing: of all the human endeavors that we enter into, marriage is almost universally the one that everyone assumes starting out they will be successful in. No-one gets married to have a marriage end, let alone badly.
Yet, they often do.
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At this point, I suspect the typical written work would have a part about "How your marriage has survived the years" with "10 top tips" or some such thing. If I think about it, I do not know I have that kind of list at my disposal.
Marriage is hard. It is lucky for most of us we do not realize how hard it is starting out, as I suspect many would simply give up at the beginning. Love - or at least the love that seems to start most marriages - will almost inevitably cool. At that point commitment to one another has to take over at some level. Without commitment to the other and to the marriage vows, those things we promised, the rest - shared interests, shared stuff, shared pets, shared children, shared life - is likely not enough.
Does God help this mix? I am a Christian and of course I believe "Yes", but the reality is that there are deeply committed marriages (some that put Christian marriages to shame) that are agnostic in nature. Certainly the model God gives us in His relationship with the Church models the sort of love and commitment (And forgiveness. Lots and lots of forgiveness.) that the marriage relationship needs. And, from my point of view, without God involved I doubt I would have made it this far.
And, of course, a sense of learning what truly matters and what does not, what is worth standing one's ground on and what is not, what is simply the quirks of the person that we married that we chose not see at the time but were always there (I have many of these).
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The day itself will be pretty unremarkable. I have work as I always do these days; The Ravishing Mrs. TB will take care of some things around the apartment. In the late afternoon we will go out for a "fancy" dinner at a restaurant recommended by coworker. All things being equal, we will probably be home by 1900.
We have forgone the "expensive and expansive" gifts (Thankfully; apparently we are in the "gems" category of traditional gift giving, so this represents a real savings). Likely we will find something we can do together to celebrate.
Which is fine, of course. If anything, anniversaries are sign of quiet commitment that lasts, not the flashy commitment that does not.
Congratulations to The Ravishing Mrs. TB and you sir, may the two of you share the journey for many more years......:)
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Nylon12! Here is hoping for many more indeed.
DeleteHappy Anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. TB. 💗
ReplyDeleteThank you very much!
DeleteWell said TB! I would attribute the bulk of my success simply to waiting to get married until I was older than most. By then, I sort of knew what I was looking for in a spouse. Even so, it still requires a lot of work to maintain.
ReplyDeleteWe don't do flashy gifts either. I usually get a bouquet of flowers and a token gift. This year was another copper anniversary according to google so I got her a copper bookmark for her books.
Happy Anniversary!
Ed, I was "late" (but probably still early compared to the current generation), which helped me as well.
DeleteOur dinner was spectacular: lettuce shrimp rolls, green goddess salad, crab crepes, gnocchi, and a cold cake dessert with marshmallow topping.
Many thanks for the good wishes!
Congrats, TB. I love "anniversaries are sign of quiet commitment that lasts." Exactly. My wife and I will celebrate 42 years in August. In some ways we were/are an unlikely match. She's four years older than I and she's very much the extrovert while I am a content introvert. I could go days without leaving the house and be perfectly fine; she gets cabin fever after a few hours housebound. Sometimes we wonder what it is we have in common. But for whatever reason, we are insanely compatible and I could not imagine life without her. A quiet commitment, indeed.
ReplyDeleteWow Bob! Congratulations!
DeleteWe are very similar (although I am the older by two years): The Ravishing Mrs. TB is quite the extrovert and I "get by". I think part of the success is simply we give each other enough room to be those things.
For what a younger man's naivete might weigh, there may be a certain preconception that marriage means you have "made it"; it exists as an end goal, not a lifelong commitment. An infatuation rather than a state of being, to reference a previous musing.
ReplyDeleteThat may well provide a drive to achieve, but in many such cases the "now what?" afterward seems quite corrosive to the relationship.
While I can hardly speculate on faith as an integral component, I can suspect that the firm belief that comes with a deep, genuine faith provides a good firmament to a lasting relationship. It's one thing to muse on if someone's deity believes in them as much as they do themselves; quite another to know that their spouse's name is the one on the loans!
Congratulations to you both on the milestone. Be it far from me to rattle of something like "blessed are those who find joy in the smallest gestures", but I feel it puts forth the thought well enough.
P_P, your insight is not wrong. I think a lot of people - myself included! - saw marriage as the end of a process (which it is, in a sense), not necessarily the beginning of another.
DeleteThe "now what?" that you allude to may very well come to the fact that as one continues in the relationship, people change - as is true with any relationship. Add to those the expected and unexpected turns of life - children, layoffs, illness - and without something to hold the core together beyond that initial flush of infatuation and passion that drive us into the marriage contract - and the ability to accept the change - "roll with the punches", I suppose - is key.
Faith (I think "commitment" works there too) is key: with believing always that one's spouse has one's best interests ultimately at heart, one lives always looking over one's shoulder waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Thanks very much for the kind words. "Blessed are those who find joy in the smallest gestures" is both profound and quite relevant. After all, married life (any relationship of any significant, I think) consists of one thousand tiny gestures that ease the friction of life.
Congratulations on the anniversary. Longevity in marriage reflects a fair amount of working at it. Being committed to work at it. The value of companionship over the years is not appreciated often enough.
ReplyDeleteThank you Leigh. The comment "If I knew what I was getting into, I might have prepared differently" comes to mind. I had almost zero idea of what married life was like other than the examples I had seen in my life; turns out it much different from the inside looking out.
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