It’s tough to listen to your elders when you are young and in like, or in lust, and about to be married. However the collective wisdom from the 200 extended-married women I interviewed for my fresh textbook The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married can aid you navigate the toughest journey of all: living with one partner, under one roof, until death do you part.
While all have been married from 15 to 70 years, their voices come from diverse backgrounds and experiences — they are rich and poor, and originate from many cultures and religions. Yet their shared ability to build enduring marriages boils down to some common and unifying traits. Here is the distillation of their secrets and strategies, including mine from 23 years as a wife, on what it really takes to constitute a marriage at the end.
1. Know That Happily-Ever-After Is A Myth:
Lower your expectations; it’s perilous fantasy to reckon marriage really method you get to be pleased forever. Expecting perfection in a marriage or a mate is a quick ticket to divorce. Listen to the longtime wives on this mark: The most pleased women have a clear sense of purpose and passion outside of their relationships. We realize that a marriage that runs on multiple tracks makes for a more satisfied spouse who gets to have it both ways — a committed marriage and personal adventures in uncharted territory. Marital bliss is imaginable if each partner is blissful without the other.
2. Don’t compare your marriage to anyone else’s:
It’s your relationship, not your sister’s, not your mother’s, and there is no gold average marriage. Everyone has issues, problems, and most importantly, their own secrets. Your girlfriend who is always calling her husband “sweetie” and sits with her legs twined with his may be flinging dishes at him when no one is encircling. So don’t worry that your marriage isn’t measuring up. Since no one knows what’s really going on in a marriage except the two human beings in it. That gives each of us the freedom to inscribe our own rules. One wife of 20 years I spoke to who is married to a devastatingly handsome male turned outside to only be having sex once every six months. Her survival secret is the lipstick-sized vibrator she keeps stashed in her purse. Another wife of 37 years exchanges periodic stolen kisses with her college boyfriend that she claims “can go a extended path to sustain a extended marriage.” This isn’t a marriage that you or I may desire, however, hey, it’s her secret, not ours. Who are we to judge?
3. Hang outside with outrageous girlfriends and boyfriends — with boundaries:
The wives with the highest marital satisfaction have a tight circle of wild women friends with whom to drink, travel and vent. Close friendships provide the escape hatch from the inevitable storms that come with living with somebody year-to-year in the grind of ordinary lifetime. Aside from a warm girl circle, platonic friendships are a sexy pick-me-up without the complications of adultery. Women who like the corporation of men shouldn’t have to eliminate men friends from their lives. These extra-marital males who always reckon we’re gorgeous and smart (since they don’t live with us) certainly constitute for a perkier wife. So marry someone who is confident and flexible, a male who knows that the more human beings, male and female, who bolster your self-esteem method there’s less employment for him!
4. Capture Separate Vacations: You like to camp and your husband likes to golf? Spend a month of the summer in the Adirondacks while he goes with his buddies to Scottsdale or bigger yet, Scotland. Obviously this works bigger once empty nest hits. After some weeks apart from each other, removed from clashing over bills and in-laws, marriage seems path hotter than the tepid state in which you left each other. Constitute certain you have the fundamental quality of trust going into a marriage. Trust allows couples to liberate each other to explore their own passions independently. And partners who keep growing as individuals during each phase of a marriage are the ones with the best chance of growing together and staying together.
5. Remember to talk to each other, and to have sex:
In between wifely gallivants and self-exploration, remember to like the guy you’re with — kiss him hello and goodbye, and constitute age for conversation, no affair how crammed your two-career schedules are. Don’t forget to have sex — sex is really relaxing and fun and can constitute all your woes go away, at least for eleven minutes or so! Express gratitude to this guy who is giving you something huge: This is the person who can aid you build a safe harbor in a earth of chaos and uncertainly. He can give you children. After years of having to Spanx every body part in order to impress your dates, your husband is the prince who gave you the freedom to soften at the belly, and to finally relax. The largest surprise secret I found is how many wives are still enjoying sex after 75 with their mates of 50-plus years!
6. Don’t try to win every fight:
Surrender once in a while instead of always having to be fair. Couples who stomp off with unresolved conflicts end up holding onto vintage rage, and antique blame that forms toxic wedges over age. Much if you can’t forgive and forget, at least let go and go on when snarly brawls and/or plate-throwing erupts behind your own closed doors. Affirm “I’m sorry”, much if you’re not sorry one bit. Showing compassion certainly makes spouses behave bigger. And the ability to bounce back from strife is the absolute secret that makes marriages at the end forever.
Iris Krasnow is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at American University. Connect with her on www.iriskrasnow.com
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