If you’ve made it to 60 years of marriage you’d surely have to figure you must be doing something right, wouldn’t you agree?
This week a local couple from the South Coast of NSW celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. When asked the secret to the long and loving marriage David and Marie cited two aspects. They are communication and consideration. Does that sound familiar? It’s one of the things I’m always advocating too.
Consideration means not just all those little common courtesies that are easily, and indeed often, overlooked in a marriage. Consideration also mean considering the feelings of your spouse and that means not broadcasting their faults to others, not making fun of them in front of others and particularly protecting your spouse’s privacy and the sanctity of marriage. So you don’t go running to your family, friends and neighbors for counsel and as a sounding board when you have an argument or something is not happening as you would like.
Instead you go to your spouse and calming and rationally talk about it. That means taking every bit as much time to listen, maybe even more, than you do to talk it over. Someone once said we were given two ears and one mouth, so we would listen twice as much as we talk. There’s a lot of wisdom in that.
A loving lasting marriage also means sharing special times together. David and Marie are celebrating their 60 wedding anniversary with a flight over Antarctica. But it doesn’t have to be a major celebration or major milestone to share special times.
Mick and I sent special day together recently, just going up to Kiama for lunch and sitting overlooking the water, then coming back to a local art show before ending up stopping off to take in the Archibald Portrait Art Prize entrants. It was interesting to look at the winner and others submitted. Interestingly enough we both picked the same painting for the people’s choice. That’s what happens when you’ve been together a long time in a loving marriage, you start to think alike and like the same things too.
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