Wedding Anniversary

My 41st wedding anniversary is coming up soon so I picked up on this quote Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s book Writing a Woman’s Life that I read recently:

The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.

It sounds very close to reality for the long term marriages I’ve observed. There is always flexibility in the roles over the years that build in resilience to the changes life brings. Life is not static so a marriage cannot be either.

There are still some things that have not changed too much over the years. My husband usually takes out the trash; I generally plan meals, put most of the items on the grocery list, and buy the groceries. He usually vacuums; I usually mop. We started out discussing larger purchases before making them; the dollar value of what we consider large has changed but the commitment to share financial decisions has been there from the beginning.

There were a lot of debates subsequent shared decisions along the way. One of the funniest ones happened early on: he was buying dress shoes and asked me which ones I thought looked the best. I told him and he bought that pair. A few weeks later he asked me why I told him to buy that particular pair of shoes because they hurt his feet! Fortunately we could both laugh about it.

And maybe being able to laugh with each other is an indicator of ‘a good marriage’ too.