Marriage-Can a Relationship Last a Lifetime?

Sustaining any close relationship over a long period of time is very challenging.  Things are always in motion, so people are always getting closer together or farther apart.  This is easy to see in friendships, since they usually have a shorter cycle.  While some friendship last for a long time, they usually fluctuate depending on the season of life, with our closest friends varying over time as we grow.  The issue with marriage is that it has to survive the same natural fluctuations as friendships, but without the resulting lulls.  Constantly growing closer would be ideal, but how can we make that happen?  One thing that I know is possible, is that two people can constantly learn more about each other, and that continuous exploration and discovery will probably help them maintain motion towards each other, as opposed to apart.

The fact that this relationship is between members of opposite genders makes it more challenging, since they come from totally different perspectives.  That difference makes even simple friendship more complicated.  I was unable to develop a simple or relaxed friendship with any girl for many years, not for lack of effort.  Since college, I have had a little more success in that regard, but it is never easy, and sustaining it is even harder.  (Girls just make things complicated;)

Marriage or the potential for it, amps up the emotional aspect of a relationship, with many hopes and dreams wrapped up in the possible outcome.  For some reason this frequently causes people (male and female) to act completely irrationally.  Small conflicts that would normally have no effect on a simple friendship can grow rapidly if left unchecked.  The greater amount of time spent together increases the volume of these potential issues as well.  And having kids would add another order of magnitude as well.

It is interesting to observe the effect that proximity has on a relationship.  In college, or living at camp, people who are “in a relationship” can eat every meal together, even though they aren’t really living together.  The positive side of that constant contact is people get to know each other better, and more genuinely.  On the other hand, out in the real world, the effort required to develop a relationship to that level causes people to have a more full appreciation for what they have invested their life in.  But I would imagine that the default contact of the smaller environment would make for an easier transition to married life, when you are together nearly all the time.

When you are living with someone else as a roommate, while many of your belongings may become physically integrated, for example in the kitchen, there is still a differentiation between what is mine, and what is yours.  Getting married involves totally integrating your lives, and (ideally) those differentiating labels disappear.  There is no longer a mine and yours, but everything is ours.  This should include not just physical belongings, but plans, hopes, and dreams.

Like all things in life worth having, I am sure marriage will require consistent effort and patience.  If at age 75, I am sitting next to my wife on the porch, and we are both still smiling, I’ll know it was worth it.  Until then, I will have to trust my observation of older couples who have succeeded in navigating the course together.  Unfortunately those cases are rarer than they should be, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful of an illustration.