– Thirty-five years and counting.

Married for thirty-five years…the words take a while to settle into my consciousness as a true description of reality. In so many ways it’s happened slowly—first the wedding, the excitement of setting up the household and sharing meals, the birth of a child, household moves, family vacations…and before long, it seemed, we were attending the wedding of a child now become adult—and then celebrating the birth of a grandchild. Now here we are. Seven children, four of them married. Eight grandchildren. And as I reflect on these thirty-five years that have passed, there are five principles that have taken me quite a few of these years to learn. Mastery may take another thirty-five years!

Marriage is pursuit of a foreign culture – the other gender, the other person with their unique personality, experiences and family culture. As someone who loves to travel and experience other cultures, this has been a helpful way of thinking about marriage. When a traveler encounters a foreign culture, he assumes he doesn’t understand how they think, why they do certain things and not others, how their values shape their activities, or what their non-verbal communication actually means. Keeping an open mind and learning to ask questions of the other culture makes for a much healthier relationship than judgment-based assessments of right and wrong, good and bad, smart and stupid. (This does not negate the fact that there are things that are right and wrong—but most times, if we truly understood the perspective of our spouse, the actions that annoyed us would in fact be valued as an important facet of the whole rather than something that is “wrong.”)

While it is hard to maintain a healthy level of curiosity thirty-five years in, this is an essential aspect of enjoying life together. Learn to be curious. Enjoy the foreign culture. You too are a foreign culture to your spouse. And where conflict exists and repeatedly surfaces, there is more work to be done. Sometimes couples actually need an objective third party to help us navigate the conflicts. Other times we just need a “cultural expert” to interpret the foreign culture that we find so perplexing and frustrating. Remember, foreign cultures make sense to those who truly inhabit them. Do the hard work of learning the point of view that forms that culture.

Memories are filed differently.  Even when people share the exact events, we will hold them and remember them differently because of the distinct aspects of the events that leave an impression on each of us. The impressions that are left are largely due to specific emotions engaged. Memories are events that trigger emotions, and those emotions are at the center of the “holding power” of the event. They can be positive or negative emotions and are often reactivated when the memory resurfaces.

Critical to relational health is the ability to distinguish between the facts and feelings of the events that formed the memories. Facts (objective truth) and feelings (emotions; what I am experiencing) are both important. Feelings require adjectives and help us to communicate and begin to understand why certain experiences caused one spouse to feel angry while the other felt sad. The ability to talk about our emotions together provides a foundation for maintaining or even building a relationship. Inability or unwillingness to have these kinds of conversations will impede the deepening of the relationship and can eventually lead to the death of a marriage.

Two are better than one, if you actually listen to each other. It’s no secret that we are not usually attracted to someone like us in personality when in search of a marriage partner. Opposites attract. We know intuitively that we need someone complementary to ourselves rather a carbon copy. This provides an enormous strength to a marriage. It can also present an immense challenge if we merely interpret our spouse’s words and actions in light of our own perspective rather than seeking to understand theirs. When each spouse can fearlessly bring his unique perspective into a relationship, the new composite idea is more likely to be a full-orbed synthesis of reality, colored though it will be by the strengths, weaknesses, and backgrounds of both spouses.

Slow down to be attentive to your spouse. In the fast pace of our modern world, we easily neglect taking intentional time to slow down together and be truly attentive to each other. As the years pass by, we know more and more about how our spouses think and act; what they like and dislike; how they respond to circumstances. We begin to think we “know” what’s going on, and little by little our hearts can calcify toward the ones we love.

Slowing down over a shared coffee, time spent on the deck as the sun sets behind the mountains, or that brief time away to escape the distractions and demands of routine life are just a few of the ways to become more attentive. The subtle shifts of a relationship often emerge into clarity in these moments. In the mad dash of normal life, we miss observing these until they become issues of unidentifiable annoyance. When our fast-paced norm is not interrupted for attentiveness, relational chasms easily emerge and get wider and deeper as time passes. Some become extremely difficult to bridge.

Relationships change because people change. I once heard someone say that every person has five significant relationships in the course of a lifetime, and that the lucky person is the one who has those five with the same person. Increasingly, I believe this is not an overstatement for the marriage relationship. (You’ve likely also heard the words, “You are not the person I married.” This is also true.)  As individuals change in the course of a lifetime, their relationships must also change to accommodate those personal changes.

Who of us would really like to be the same person we were thirty-five years ago? We value change, growth and maturity. A change in perspectives is a normal part of actively engaging in life, confronting the challenges that are uniquely ours and adapting to the new knowledge and insights we gain. Sometimes we change in ways that are different than the ways our spouse changes. The relationship changes as a result, and we have a lot of work to do in order to establish a “new norm” in our relationship. This can involve matters as insignificant as our favorite morning beverage to something much more weighty such as a spiritual awakening or shift that redirects our spiritual journey. Such shifts have been at the heart of marriage breakups because they were not navigated well. However, they can also be times of growth and greater maturity if we acknowledge that significant changes are occurring and that they will have an impact on the relationship. Do the hard work of renewing, reshaping, and realigning the relationship for mutual benefit and growth.

I’m grateful to God for a wife who has navigated the thirty-five years of our marriage in far more attentive ways than I have (and has at times had to work hard to get my attention back to the relationship as it faced challenges and threats). We’ve had the help of friends, pastors and counselors who assisted us in the journey. Here’s to another thirty-five…well, maybe not thirty-five, but as many as the Lord graciously gives to us.