"When I was a child, my grandmother died and was buried in the churchyard in Castlecorner, Ireland," relates Herbert O'Driscoll. "The following year, I went there on a holiday. One day we drove to visit relatives, I in the back seat with my grandfather. As we passed the graveled driveway leading up to the churchyard, my grandfather, thinking he was unobserved, pressed his face against the window of the car and with a small, hidden motion of his hand, waved. It was then I came to my first understanding of the majesty and vulnerability of love."
O'Driscoll is speaking of a love seasoned and refined throughout many years - a love worth working toward - and a love more precious than life itself.How do couples develop a love like this? There is no single magic formula, but couples who have such lifetime love do often share common characteristics that nurture that love. These characteristics, identified below, translate to a code of daily behaviors that keep a marriage strong and that can be modeled by any couple interested in investing in an enduring relationship. In short:
Long-term couples practice "selective insensitivity." "Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid," observes an author.
Any of us can take a lesson from long-term couples who have toughed out the bad times and, over the years, have learned to employ selective insensitivity - the art of developing tolerance for things they can't change.
Helga, Carl Sandburg's daughter, for example, writes of her parents: "There never were loud arguments back and forth at our house. My father raged and roared, and often. But it was one-way. Mother coaxed him out of it.
"Once, when he was very old, I saw him pull at a door that was stuck. He rattled the handle and shouted. My mother, a small woman, looked up at him and patted his chest. `What a fine strong voice!' she said. Disarmed, he stood there in love. It was a thread established early and woven through their life."
They play for keeps. Playing for keeps, in the words of one long-term spouse, means there is no escape clause. "Divorce? Never! Murder? Often. When you marry, you lock the door behind you. If you have problems, you fight it out, wait it out or work it out."
Playing for keeps also means viewing marriage as a task that sometimes demands that you grit your teeth and plunge ahead in spite of the difficulties. "I'll tell you why we've stayed together. I'm just too stubborn to give up," explains one wife who knows what "gritting your teeth" means.
Finally, playing for keeps means not calling the relationship into question - ever! That means not mentioning the ugly "D" word in times of anger.
They savor their shared history. "People in long marriages value their history together," observes an author. "Building a history together, chapter by chapter, every couple creates a `story,' and couples in long marriages respect their own stories - about how they met, their private jokes, their code words and rituals, even the sadness they shared. Theirs is not mere nostalgia but an attachment to the significance of their past and of the time spend together. . . When the present gets raggedy, they look to the past to find the good they have shared."
They keep their fences mended. Long-term couples know that it simply doesn't help - or work - to fight and they avoid becoming mired in conflict in the first place. Though they may hash things out, they often manage the tense times by just simply "getting through them" without making them worse.
"It came to me one day that our fights were totally self-contained when one of us walked out of the room and we were back in five minutes, happy just to be together again," reflects a wife. "So, at that point, we began to walk out on arguments on purpose."
They recognize their spouse's ultimate value. Long-term couples know each other's ultimate value and they also know how to express it, as reflected in the remarks of a husband in a 55-year marriage. At a family gathering, in speaking of the chili sauce on the table that he and his wife had made, he remarked: "It gets better with age - just like my wife."
They mirror each other's "best self." "Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts," muses an author. In this vein, long-term couples often "see" in their spouses the man or woman whom they first married. Of his wife of 53 years, a husband says softly, "I still miss her when we're apart." Taking her hand, he adds: "And I still love that lady I met on those stairs."
They consider their marriage precious. When asked to name the personal possession that had given her the most value for the money, Erma Bombeck offered this reply: "I would have to say my wedding ring. For years, it has done its job. It has lead me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward. It has reminded me every day of the last 30 years that I have someone who loves me."