We believe that marriage should be a long, happy honeymoon that only gets better with the passage of time.
And it can be.
We have been married for fifty-four years. For almost that long we have been researching and studying the secrets of a happy marriage—the kind of marriage that is a lasting source of joy. We know it can be done.
And we are here to share with you the secrets we have learned over all those years. We are confident that with them as your guidelines a joyful, lasting marriage can be yours.
Of course, it won’t all be easy. There will be ups and downs. We know as well as anyone that a lasting marriage is no snap. It takes more than inertia, a handbook of bedroom techniques, a cold blast of economic pressure, or the threat of family or religious sanctions. You have to turn a lot of stumbling blocks into stepping stones. You have to know how to prevent a crisis from turning into a disaster.
But there is something even more basic.
You have to believe that a lasting and happy marriage is possible for you and, most importantly, you have to believe that it is worth the effort.
Everybody knows that statistics imply that marriages are no longer forever. It’s not just that a lot of marriages fail but that the landscape is littered with couples who stay together without, it seems, a shred of happiness in their relationship. We can’t dispute such facts. We can’t claim that the current odds for a long and happy marriage are all that good. But we can tell you that we are totally and completely certain that this need not be your destiny. Your marriage can last.
Not everybody, of course, agrees that it is worth the effort.
A lot of people can see a long-married couple and, rather than a round of applause, the most they can manage is a quiet “that’s nice.” For many the idea of living with someone for fifty years is enough to bring on an attack of indigestion. And then there’s always someone to wonder aloud: “Why would anyone want to do that?”
