What Makes a Marriage Work Long-Term?

When I was a lot younger, I would see news articles about couples celebrating their 50^th anniversaries and marvel. As a newspaper editor, I even wrote about some of them myself. But I would often wonder, ‘How do folks stay married that long?’

 

Well, surprise! Last year my wife and I joined that elite and increasingly rare company, and now we’ve started our second half-century together. How can that be? We’re not that old! 

Despite spending more than five decades together, we’re not ‘experts.’ We’re imperfect people and have had our share of struggles, just as everyone does – health, financial, family. Thankfully, they’ve ultimately served to strengthen our relationship, and by trusting in God and His grace, our marriage has survived and thrived.

 

There are many reasons why “golden anniversary” couples are so uncommon. People are getting married much later in life – if they marry at all. If folks get married in their late 20s, early 30s or even after that, their likelihood of arriving at the big 5-0 diminishes considerably. Just do the math.

 

But an even greater reason for not seeing marital longevity is too often married couples bail in the face of difficulties, rather than determining to work through them together. It’s said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ but too often folks think it’s easier to quit and get a divorce than weather the challenges that can forge strong marital bonds.

 

There’s no ‘secret sauce’ to making the union between a man and a woman succeed, but I think a good formula is found in a Bible passage that’s often included in wedding ceremonies but not always taken seriously. It’s 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, which says:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails….”

 

These words are easy to recite during the rite in which a man and a woman become husband and wife. But they are very difficult to live out. Because in our ‘Me, me, me,’ self-focused world, this passage exhorts us to put the needs and interests of the other person first.

 

Being patient means setting aside our agendas and timing when things don’t seem to be going our way. Kindness is directed toward the other person, often sacrificially; it’s needed even when we might not want to extend it. Envy, boasting, pride, rudeness and self-seeking – all involve putting oneself ahead of the other, which doesn’t serve to honor or uplift the marriage partner. 

 

We might be able to justify anger, but a reasonable husband or wife learns to control how it’s expressed, constructively or destructively. And just as it’s wise to avoid becoming hysterical, it’s also good to refrain from being historical. Harboring resentment and withholding forgiveness over past wrongs serves no good purpose.

 

Focusing on truth and rejecting evil in any of its myriad forms are foundational for a healthy marital relationship. And love in its truest form seeks to protect, maintains trust, has high hopes for the other person, and determines to persevere. That’s why the words “in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer” are included in many wedding vows. The covenant of marriage is the commitment to stay with one another no matter what. Love, in spite of adversity, is to be permanent, unfailing.

 

When we reflect on the passage in 1 Corinthians 13, we see these qualities best exhibited in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. John 3:16 familiarly reminds us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And as He looked toward the cross, Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). 

 

Can you imagine a greater love than what we see demonstrated by the Father and the Son? “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

 

Many places in the Scriptures describe the relationship between the Lord and His Church ias a marriage, with the universal body of believers being His bride. Jesus’ first miracle took place at a wedding (John 2:1-11), and the culmination of His work also involves a wedding: “Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride [the Church] has made herself ready…. ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’” (Revelation 19:7,9).

What’s our takeaway? Marriage is hard work. It’s sacrificial. But the rewards for persevering and learning to love unconditionally are priceless – and eternal. 

Key Ingredients for Marriages That Last and Last

On those rare but delightful times when we hear of a couple who have been married for a really long time, like 60 or even 70 years, what comes to your mind? Besides the phrase, “No way!”?

 

What would you suppose is their secret to marital longevity, their “special sauce” that has kept them from divorcing, or even murdering one another, all those years?

 

We could start with the obvious: To be married for a very long time, you have to live for a very long time. Duh! But there’s got to be more to being able to keep a marriage alive – and thriving – than just continuing to breathe. 

 

Suppose someone were to ask you to identify the keys or “ingredients” for a long marriage. How would you respond? Especially in our times when terms like “’til death do us part” and “for better or for worse” are increasingly being omitted from marriage vows. These days it’s more like, ‘Hey, we’ll give this a shot and see how it works out. We can always bail if things aren’t going to our liking.’

 

What qualities do you think would contribute to keeping a marriage strong and enduring, defining that as one that has lasted at least several decades? We could probably suggest dozens of qualities that can help keep a marriage healthy, things such as love; communication; common or at least complementary interests; understanding; mutual support; patience, and forgiveness. 

 

For marriages that have thrived for decades, many of those qualities have probably contributed to their success. But I’d suggest two other factors that in my experience have made the difference, keeping a marriage off the casualty list. They are: perseverance and faith.

 

Perseverance, as I would define it, is the determination to press on when quitting might sound like a good idea. This means more than enduring, because endurance can simply involve trying to wait out a storm until it passes. Perseverance also means taking action, addressing the crisis and striving to work toward a workable resolution. 

 

We’ve all heard the old saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Applied to marriage, this doesn’t mean leaving. It means hanging in there – persevering to do the work necessary to keep the U.S.S. Marriage afloat and sailing forward. Because once the illusions of the wedding day give way to the daily realities of living together, it takes a lot more than sex and warm, gushy feelings of love to stay the course.

 

Two Bible passages speak directly to this, although the context isn’t limited just to the institution of marriage. In Romans 5:3-5, the apostle Paul speaks to how we cope with adversity: “…we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” 

 

God can use the inevitable hard times of life – our sufferings – to produce perseverance, which builds character, and then hope. Paul definitely was one well-acquainted with sufferings and adversity in many forms. For him, hope wasn’t just wishful thinking or a “hope-so,” but a confident assurance that with God’s enabling power he could persevere through the struggle.

 

The second passage, written by the apostle James, conveys a similar idea: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4).

 

For followers of Christ, as much as we might not like it, our faith grows best during seasons of trial. Just as the rings of a tree that have grown during adverse conditions produce the strongest wood, trials that test our faith can result in the strongest marriage, career, or any other worthwhile pursuit.

 

Today my wife and I celebrate 49 years of marriage, almost five decades of marital bliss. Just kidding – there have been many times that weren’t anything close to blissful. But together we’ve persevered. We’ve gone through major job changes, financial struggles, severe health problems and family challenges. But God has seen us through them all, and we know He’ll do the same with issues we confront in the future.

 

Much of the credit goes to my wife who in some respects had to sacrifice more than I have. Including simply putting up with me! But the lion’s share of the credit must go to the Lord Jesus, who has been the foundation for our marriage and our family, as well as the glue keeping us together when circumstances could have torn us apart.

Together we have experienced the reality of His promise, “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3). As in all things, to quote the old hymn, “to God be the glory – great things He has done!”