Marriage and boomers

Someone in my family has just celebrated a wedding anniversary. 42 years.

I think that’s amazing, because it seems like you just don’t hear about that very often. Maybe it’s happening all the time and it just doesn’t make news, while celebrity messages of 18 months grab the headlines.

To me, any couple that achieves a milestone like that is to be applauded, supported, and even studied. Obviously they didn’t go into it thinking everything was always going to be rosy. They understood there would be challenges and conflicts and bad days.

Yet they built a foundation that was strong enough to survive it all.

I’m wondering if that’s a lost art these days. We live in a very disposable society. If the phone acts up, no worries, a new one comes out next year. If you get bored with your car, well go get another one. Animal shelters are filled with dogs and cats that someone decided they didn’t really want after all.

And then there’s social media. How many relationships go sour over Facebook? How many people break up with each other over Twitter, or even more sadistically, via a text?

Where’s the glue that used to help keep couples together long enough to achieve an extended warranty?

It sure seems like couples from WWII and the 1950s stayed together longer. There just weren’t as many options for taking off, starting over, and tossing away a relationship.

Or did the movies just make us think things lasted longer…and were happier?

People are definitely marrying at older ages than they did back in the 1930s and 1940s. These days, a first marriage that ends in divorce usually lasts about 8 years. The good news more people aged 55 and older are getting remarried. Not surprisingly, men are more interested in doing this than women, maybe because studies show men enjoy more health benefits from marriage than women.

Still, I think instead of being so consumed with the latest headlines about who is cheating on whom and which Hollywood couple just made the front page and so on and so on, we should be lauding those who stay together. Through lost jobs. Sleepless nights with a newborn. In-laws. Forgotten birthdays. Recliners and football games. Tears, arguments, and disappointments.

Those who trekked through it all and made it to moments of joy, togetherness, support, fun, and friendship.

Here’s a few odd stats about marriage:

A certain sheikh and his bride decided to have a big wedding—at $100 million dollars, it holds the record for the most expensive one ever (so far).
The oldest couple to divorce (according to the Guinness Book of World Records) had been married 36 years. Both were 98 when they divorced.
The shortest Hollywood marriage on record was between Rudolph Valentino and Jean Acker. She apparently changed her mind during the service and then locked her husband out of the honeymoon suite.

One of the longest marriages on record lasted 86 years, only ending with the death of the husband at the age of 106.

I want to believe boomers are pretty good at sticking together. I want to believe that love prevails. I also know that sometimes the healthiest and best thing is for a couple to part ways, and there’s no shame in that. None of us knows what goes on behind closed doors and when it’s over, it’s over. I certainly don’t have a success story to tell in matters of the heart.

But to those of you who still look at each other over the morning cereal bowl after 30, 40, 50, 60 years and beyond: congratulations! You are the true celebrities.