***Reflections On A Half-Century Of Marriage

By America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts. When we said our marriage vows 48 years ago and promised “Until Death Do Us Part,” we never imagined those 48 years would go by so quickly. But they did. This year, we will celebrate our 48th Wedding Anniversary. Just imagine, being successfully married for 48 years! And as a friend of ours used to say, “And to the same person!” Having a successful marriage is certainly a life goal. We are well on our way to being one of those fortunate couples that celebrate their “golden anniversary.” While we spend a lot of time studying and writing about the successful long-term relationships of others, we decided to spend some time today thinking about our own wonderful marriage that has spanned nearly five decades of our lives. One of our favorite lines from a song says it all, “Still crazy after all these years.” That’s the way we feel about each other – still crazy in love after all these years. Forty-eight years ago, a small town Missouri boy met a Southern California girl while attending College. His friends were the sons and daughters of Missouri farmers and other good folks who worked on the railroad and on the farms of Missouri. Her friends were California surfers and swimmers. She was bronze colored, tall, and had that look of a long-distance swimmer. It was fun for Charley to see her walking down the sidewalk grooving to the sounds of the Beach Boys in her head as her hair blew in the wind. He still marvels today at how much he loved her then and how much more he loves her today. Think golden anniversary! Liz used to listen for hours while Charley sang Elvis songs to her. She once said, “Gosh, you really do sound like him!” Charley turned red, but he was proud. Elvis was his hero. And now Liz was! Liz tells Charley every day how much she loves him and how she couldn’t imagine life without him. Charley smiles, then cries. It feels so good to be loved so much. He reflects on his life with Liz and wonders how he got so lucky. He loves to tell everyone within earshot how he “married up!” He swears that most men do. Liz says she feels the same way about him. Hmmmm . . . maybe we both married up! It’s always fun for us to reflect on life together. We have so, so many common interests. We are alike in many, many ways. But through it all we have maintained our individuality and our respective identities – with enormous respect for our differences as well as our similarities. We recently wrote an article entitled Until Death Do Us Part . By the measures we articulated in that article, it is still clear that we are still crazy in love after all these years and cannot imagine life without each other. Helping build loving relationships that last a lifetime has become one of our greatest goals in life. As we describe in Building a Love that Lasts , being in love and being loved is a great way to spend your life. And while we truly and sincerely believe that successful loving relationships are not all that difficult to understand and make work, we continue to be surprised by the fact that so many “people in love” won’t do the simple things required to make their love last. On the occasion of our upcoming 48th Wedding Anniversary we are renewing our commitment to help others learn the important lessons about love and relationships so that they can practice the simple truths about love every day of their lives together and, at some point in the future, celebrate with others, their golden anniversary. May your love be as strong as ours and your commitment to make your love work even stronger. Go be happy and in love. There is nothing like it. Creating a successful marriage is not always the easiest thing to do. Your visiting our blog suggests you are highly interested in making your marriage work! And truthfully, we have learned over 30 years of marriage research that there are proven effective ways to ensure a happy and healthy marriage. In fact, we took hundreds of tips from the thousands of happy couples we interviewed and put them into our award-winning and bestselling book, Building a Love that Lasts . **Today, you can see how you stack up to the best marriages around the world. Take the Marriage Quiz to assess your chances of achieving a successful marriage of your own and read How to Marry the Right Guy, to find out if your guy has the essential characteristics to be a great husband. By Drs. Charles and Elizabeth Schmitzr America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts