The Secret To A Happy Marriage Is Not What You Think It Is

"You know what your Great Uncle Bob says? The secret to marriage is...stubbornness! That's the key!" my mother's cousin looked right into the video camera at our reception as she said this. She smiled and then winked at her husband of twenty-five years.

It was twenty years ago, and they are still married. My Great Uncle Bob continues to adore his bride despite over fifty years of marriage. And my husband and I have benefited from their heirloom advice which has proven to be true, again and again: Be stubborn! Although it took us some time to figure out just what kind of stubborn they meant...

An Impasse Will Happen

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be!” my husband of just eight months yelled.

“Well, that’s how it is! How am I supposed to change it?” I threw my question in his face. I was fed up, and so was he.

My husband and I were on opposite ends of the small family room of our apartment, and we couldn't agree on anything. After months of disagreements, we couldn't stand each other. That night was the Big Fight of 1997, and neither of us wanted to budge or compromise. Both of us wanted to fight to win our own agendas.

We had friends who experienced paradise on earth their first year of marriage, but that was not for us. Perhaps it's because we're that dangerous mix of both being firstborns, but there was no dilly dallying around issues and smoothing over inconveniences. The first year of marriage was one adjustment after another. We even fought on our honeymoon.

We were not alone in our experience of the Difficult First Year. Many couples, including those with rock solid marriage prep, have experienced the first year of marriage as the year that tested their mettle and commitment. I knew a woman who had to have marriage counseling just four weeks after the wedding. She and her husband had married later in life, but for all the maturity and experience in the world, they still had to overcome living together.

Life is Beautiful but Flawed

The Adjustment Period is among the reasons many couples choose to live together before marriage: They test the waters to see if marriage will really work for them. It sounds so logical, even if it is against Church teaching.

But studies show time and again that living together is not the same as marriage. Some studies indicate that living together before saying "I do" actually increases the odds of the marriage ending in divorce. Mother Church is right, with reason backing her up.

My husband and I had a lot stacked against us in our first year: Our honeymoon was to Venice, Italy, which was gorgeous and romantic. However, navigating a foreign land on our own added stress and tension. He was over nine years older than I and had been a bachelor until our wedding when he was thirty-two.

Not only that, he had difficulty enduring roommates. On top of it all, weeks before our wedding, he graduated with a new degree, and six months after, we moved to Dallas from Oklahoma City for his new career.

He wasn't the only one though who had to change to make marriage work. Although I was younger and more inclined to have fun with roomies, I was not used to being on my own.

From family life to college apartment living, there always seemed to be someone around if I wanted to chat or do something. I was used to spontaneous trips to the coffee shop and walks around a park.

A life of sitting around quietly after dinner was completely foreign to me. Although we had spent plenty of time reading together side-by-side when we were engaged, living it day after day when I'd rather be out, was tedious.

Beware the "If only"

If only we had honeymooned on a beach in the U. S., if only he had not changed jobs, if only we had not moved, if only circumstances had been easier...

Would it have really made a difference overall though? Because I've found that couples eventually hit that Adjustment Period whether it's the first year, or the year they have kids, or the year they buy a house.

We were not Catholic when we married, although our Episcopal church used a Catholic marriage prep program. However, Catholic friends had similar experiences to ours, though it would be nice to say that being married in the Catholic Church brings the assurance of marital peace. It seems no matter your beliefs or partaking of the sacraments, human

beings are simply a mishmash of complications.

A Catholic friend who has been married as long as I have laughed when she talked about her first year of marriage. Like us, she and her husband had a lot of changes their first year.

“It’s just an adjustment. There’s no way around it, but we made several life changes when we got married, so our first year was particularly rough,” she said.

The Gravity of Simple Stubborn Love

So how do you make it through? How do you survive that year of marriage when suddenly you’re faced with the reality that this person is with you for the rest of your life and that person is not always awesome? Stubbornness, absolutely! But what kind of stubborn? Stubborn, flexible love.  That is what ended the Big Fight of 1997.

We both stormed across the room and got in each other’s faces and declared, “You’re not getting rid of me!” It sliced the tension in half and it lost its hold. Suddenly whatever it was that was tearing us apart no longer mattered. The only thing we cared about was making it work.

We both surrendered, not so much to each other, but to our marriage, to Jesus. Instead of competing to win an argument, we chose to let Jesus conquer it all. "Jesus, you win!" became a quick prayer that has helped us through 20 years of life together.

The truth is, you need a lot of stubborn flexible love in marriage, because Adjustment Periods come multiple times over decades. You need it when the babies come along and jobs demand overtime. Serious illnesses—whether of parents, children, or one another—can hit you hard, and you have to do a lot of loving, stubborn surrender. Of course, death is inevitable, you eventually face grief together—an animal that can be terrifying in its unpredictable influences. Through all this you need stubborn love which forgives, comforts, and sometimes confronts.

As long as I have you...

When friends who didn’t hit their Adjustment Period until the third or fourth year of marriage worried about divorce and failure, I was able to tell them with full confidence, “Nah, you’re just adjusting,” and then oblige them with stories of our fights which seemed so serious at the time, and now are rather comical.

As I get further into my forties, I can tell you that the adjustment never ends. Some years are smooth, yet most years there’s always something.

But if you can learn to laugh together, to pray, to hold on when nothing makes sense, and to let go and let Jesus win, you will make it.

As long as you cling to each other and to Jesus, nothing is impossible, even marriage for a lifetime.