If you are going to make it to 43 years together you better learn to like each other and to like being with each other. This might not sound like much of a secret, or key factor, in getting to 43, but it is a big deal. You love, and choose to love, each other to get to 43, but you must also like each other. Liking each other, and liking to be with each other, is not automatic.

Liking each other has to do with enjoying them and enjoying being with them. To enjoy your spouse, you need to know your spouse. What do they enjoy doing? What makes them laugh? What makes them cry? What are their fears? What is their dream vacation (even if you can’t provide it)? What annoys them?

You need to be a student of your spouse. The beauty of this is that after 43 years I am still learning. We are in a different season of our life than we were 20 years ago, and even 5 years ago. This means that some things change, but the changes are easier to adjust to because of how much we know about each other.

Liking your spouse and liking to spend time with your spouse, does not mean you pretend there is nothing that annoys you, it is recognizing that we both do annoying things and choosing to not let those things disrupt the relationship.

Liking to spend time with your spouse means that being with them matters more than what you are doing when you are with them. Yesterday afternoon, on my day off, we went to a local park and sat by a lake for a couple of hours. We took lawn chairs, a cooler and we each had a book to read. Most of the time was spent reading and some of it was spent talking. What mattered most was that we were with each other. It was a very enjoyable time. At other times we have fished together, or gone shopping, or played a game together. The activity is secondary, being with each other is primary.

Liking each other is a choice. Liking to spend time together requires you to be together and that often requires some planning. Look for what your spouse enjoys and seek for ways to help make this happen. Then seek to join them in what they enjoy. You will notice that you may begin to enjoy it as well. Even if you don’t enjoy the activity, you will enjoy being with your spouse as they do something that they enjoy. This will definitely raise your likeability factor as well.

Being with each other will happen naturally because you are married and living in the same spaces. Being near each other is not the same as enjoying time together. Enjoying spending time together must be a choice. You will spend time together, so enjoy it. Make that choice. Plan to spend time together. There are a lot of things that interrupt and interfere with your schedules, make sure that you choose to spend time together and realize that you like each other and let your spouse know that you like being with them.

Here’s hoping that you enjoy being with your spouse and that this week you create time together.

Dennis

Another secret/factor to getting to 43 years of marriage is wearing the right kind of glasses. Seriously, what kind of glasses you wear has a big impact on your marriage. Think about it, what is the purpose of wearing glasses? To improve your vision. I realize that it is now trendy to wear glasses that have no power to impact your vision. But I am talking about glasses that impact, influence and even change your vision.

Several years ago, my wife and I were in a store and my wife was searching for something. While she was searching I was finding ways to entertain myself and anyone else near me. (For some reason my wife doesn’t always like for me to go shopping with her.) I saw one of those stands holding reader glasses. Those five-dollar type glasses that come in a variety of magnifications. I put on a few pair and was laughing at how goofy I looked. I put on a pair and went to find my wife to show her and get a laugh from her. After the laughs I turned to go put the glasses back and then it happened. I looked at some signs in the store. I took the glasses off and looked at the same signs. I put them back on and realized I could see letters and numbers much clearer with the glasses on. Shortly after this incident I went to an eye doctor and I have been wearing glasses ever since.

I discovered when I got my glasses that my vision had been impaired. Some things that had been blurry became clear and headaches I had learned to endure disappeared. All because I finally was wearing the right glasses.

Whether you physically wear glasses, or contacts, is not the issue to a lasting marriage. What is necessary is for you to have the right vision of your spouse and marriage. You must view your spouse accurately and I believe there should be a definite rose-colored tint to your vision. I don’t believe you should be blind to reality, but you must have a positive view of your spouse, and your marriage, to make it last.

I don’t mean that you should ignore serious issues. Issues of abuse, of anger, of abandonment and more must be addressed, change must take place and outside help is needed.

I am talking about seeing that your spouse is not perfect, focusing on the positive in them and working to improve your own issues. I am talking about not dwelling on what is irritating. Too often I see, and hear, couples complaining about things with their spouse that irritate them, which results in them missing the big picture. They complain about a toilet seat left up and ignore the faithfulness. They gripe about a less than pristine house and ignore the support they are given. They moan about all kinds of things and refuse to look at all the positives and the possibilities in their marriage.

We need to wear the right glasses in our marriage. We need to see clearly and accurately, but we must have a tint that brings our focus to the positives. We need to put on the glasses that remind us of why we were first attracted to our spouse, beyond just looks. Because looks change over time. My hair is much different than on our wedding day. I have much less of it and what I have left is a different color. My body has changed. If our marriage only lasted the length of time the looks stayed the same, we would not have come close to 43 years. For my wife, she must view me with a focus that takes many other things into consideration and I do the same.

My point of all this is that you must see your spouse clearly with focus on the positives. If you wear magnifying glasses that only see the flaws, you and your spouse will be miserable, and your marriage will not last.

What glasses are you wearing in your marriage?

Dennis

Getting to 43 years of marriage, and to have it still be loving and growing takes a lot of work. There is no magic formula and no one secret, but there are some keys and it seems many people are not aware of them. This is my effort to share some key factors, or secrets if you prefer, that have brought my wife and I to where we will be celebrating our 43^rd anniversary next month.

Laughter is said to be good medicine, it is also a secret to get to 43. Where there is laughter there are happy and joyful people. Laughter is critical to get to 43, and beyond. There will be plenty of serious and difficult stuff to deal with, so laugh when you can. It could save your marriage.

I am not talking about laughing to hurt someone. I am not talking about one-sided laughter. I am talking about shared and generous laughter. I am talking about laughing and at yourself, laughing with your spouse and being okay with being laughed at on occasion.

Laughter lightens the mood in most situations. It makes you feel better. Laughter is usually contagious. When someone laughs it quite often prompts laughter from those around them. Sometimes the laughter that is created is simply laughing at the way the other person laughs. Which in turn brings more laughter.

Laughing at your spouse’s groaner of a joke, might be something that must be learned, but it can be positive. My wife has a lot of experience at responding to lame jokes and since I am a preacher, she has heard some of them many, many times.

Laughing together draws people together. Laughing together opens you up and creates an environment where it is safe to share thoughts, dreams, fears and hurts with that person. My wife often says when she is leading a group of ladies that she wants to have them share laughter and tears. When that happens, it has been a good group. But the laughter comes first.

If you want to have a marriage that get to 43, and even beyond, then you must laugh. When two people spend as much time together as it requires to have a lasting marriage, there are a lot of reasons to laugh. We do silly things we do dumb things, we get our words twisted, we forget things, and much more. All of these should produce some laughter.

The couple who laughs together seems to last together. There has been a lot of laughter in our 43 years. When our kids and grandkids gather the laughter is amped up several degrees. Each of our three kids by marriage (our in-law kids) learned very early that if they were going to join this family laughter would be required.

So, laugh a little today, or better yet, laugh a lot today. It could add years to your marriage.

Dennis

A major secret/factor to get your marriage to 43 is Forgiveness. No relationship can last, let alone grow, without forgiveness. Forgiveness is much easier to write about, or talk about, than it is to live.

In a marriage there are many opportunities for forgiveness. There are also many opportunities for bitterness or withholding forgiveness. When we live together, spend a lot of time together and share life together there are a lot of situations that arise that can allow for being offended or hurt. Being offended or hurt demonstrates why forgiveness is critical to a lasting, loving marriage.

Forgiveness is misunderstood. It is not pretending something didn’t happen. It is admitting it happened and that is was harmful, but you are choosing to forgive. It is not saying that what happened is okay. Forgiveness says it wasn’t okay, but my love for you is greater than the hurt. Forgiveness is not the same as trust. Depending on the depth of the hurt it may take some time for trust to be restored. Forgiveness is choosing love. Forgiveness is also choosing your relationship over everything else.

We must understand that the need for forgiveness goes both directions. Both of you will need to be forgiven and both of you will need to forgive. Forgiveness is not just for the benefit of the one who caused the hurt. It is also for the one doing the forgiving. If forgiveness is not given, then the one who was hurt will become bitter. Bitterness crushes relationships and will destroy the one who is bitter.

A lasting relationship requires forgiveness.

In our 43 years there has been much forgiveness needed and much forgiveness given. If that were not true we never would have made this long.

I have heard people state that someone who have been forgiven often will begin to take advantage of the forgiving partner. I have found just the opposite to be true. When you love someone, and are committed to them and the marriage, you are devastated when you realize you have hurt them. When they forgive you, you become determined to not do things that need to be forgiven. You remember the look of hurt in your spouse’s eyes and you sense the devastation they feel in their heart and you do not want to cause that again.

Forgiveness is best understood by looking at Jesus Christ and how he forgave.

Forgiveness is something that we must continue to learn as we continue to forgive.

Many people mistakenly think that if they can still remember the hurt then they have not forgiven the other person. We remember hurts and we often have evidence of them in our life. But we must take a cue from physical hurts. I have some scars on my body. I can tell you how I got them and about the hurt when the incident occurred. But now, the scars remind me more of the healing than of the hurt. It is like that with forgiveness. As we continue to heal, as we learn more about forgiveness, our relational scars will begin to remind us of the healing more than the hurt.

Keep forgiving if you want your marriage, and your relationships to last and to grow, it is not optional.

Dennis