Tag Archives: happy lasting marriage

Remember the Plan

The other week playing tennis, my partner and I were down 3 games to 1. ’Okay, let’s get it back to 3 all for starters,’ I said and she agreed. Then after we won the next game, we both said ‘remember the plan.’ One game was a particularly long drawn out game that went to a number of deuces, about twenty in all. We kept hanging in there telling each other, ‘remember the plan, remember the plan,’ repeating it like a mantra. It occurred to me then, that it’s not a bad analogy for marriage – to remember the plan. … Continue reading →

Average Length of Marriages

Mary Ann posed an interesting question on a recent article, about the average length of marriages these days. It’s hard to track down exact statistics as there are so many variables, but here are a few things I found will give an idea of the length of the average marriage. In the United Kingdom in 2003, out of 153490 divorces, 40,599 divorces occurred during the first 5-9 years time frame. The next biggest number was between 10-14 years 29,831 and 20,923 in the 15-19 years period. What is interesting is the number that ends up in divorce after only 0-2 … Continue reading →

Odd One Out

More and more these days I’m feeling like the odd one out, as far as society is concerned. And you know what? I don’t care a bit. The reason for feeling so out of sync with much of the rest the world is because I have been happily married for a long time. In this day and age it seems to be the anomaly rather than the nor, Recently Janet, the editor of Footprints magazine, and her husband celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. She was amazed at the response from people who carried on as thought it was a major … Continue reading →

The Value of Marriage

Someone asked me yesterday in an interview what I’m passionate about. One of the things I mentioned was I’m passionate about marriage and sharing what I have learned over my many years of marriage. Then last night, I was reading an article and it cited research showing married people live longer, suffer lower rates of depression, and victimization. Not only that but marriage contributes to greater wealth. I immediately thought about the old adage ‘two can live as cheaply as one.’ There appears to be some truth in it. Monash University in a study recently found family break ups rather … Continue reading →

Essentials for Happy Lasting Marriage

Here are my first five essentials for a happy lasting marriage. Last night as Mick and I played a game of Settlers of Catan, I was thinking about our marriage and thinking about how far we’ve come over our more than 40 years of marriage from that young couple that started out together. So here are a few of my essentials. 1. Love Love is the obvious starting point. But not the wishy washy excuse for love we see on movie and TV screens. And not just lust or chemical attraction which also gets portrayed often but a real concern … Continue reading →

A Radical View of Marriage?

Recently Mary Ann expressed concern about the idea of servant wives. I’d like to suggest we should be servant wives for our husbands, but also that our husbands be servant husbands for their wives. Now I admit my view of marriage is closely influenced by the biblical view of marriage. It is one that often causes controversy because it says ‘wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord,’ Ephesians 5:22. The word ‘submit’ just about causes an apoplexy in some people. ‘Submit? Me? You’re joking? What about my rights?” These are the types of comments it inspires. And yes, … Continue reading →