My guess is we all want to know the secrets of a happy lasting marriage. So I’m always on the lookout for stories about and advice from those who have managed this.
Today’s stories come from two Aussie couples .Arthur and Nancy Seymour celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary recently, so you’d figure they’d learned a few things along the way nod they have. When asked about their secret to a lasting happy marriage, Arthur said ‘love and tolerance.’
His wife Nancy went on to add that Arthur’s mother had been one who claimed their marriage would never last. They sure proved her wrong. Both say married life is ,’ a journey to be enjoyed.’
‘In married life you have high spots and low spots,’ Arthur said. The key is not letting the low spots get you down but working though them. In the times of the low spots that’s when we need to keep love and tolerance alive and not dwell on what is wrong but rather focus on what is right in marriage and with our spouse.
The other couple, Bob and Lynne Dixon, has been together since they were young. They met when Lynne was 16. They have both been out in the working force taking care of themselves and each other since they were that age.
Despite traumas in the family, which included a suicide of a close family member, they have come through it all together. Bob and Lynne are both artists. Bob is a painter of mostly abstract paintings while Lynne is a potter. Lynne is ’the one who hold the string on her man’s kite,’ which I take to mean she is the one who keeps him grounded and focused.
Bob says, ’Once you commit to having children you’ve got to look after them.’ For Bob this meant working as a house painter, but all the time he was working to earn a living he was thinking about art and color. Now their family are grown he and Lynne are able to concentrate more on their art and pleasing each other.
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