Next month, my husband Barry and I will have been together for 51 years — a length of time that frankly surprises us. We met in a classic self-help workshop in the 70s in Vancouver, BC. When people ask us the secret to a long marriage, Barry and I chuckle ruefully and reply half-jokingly, “Skip the first year.”
It’s true — the initial chapter in our marriage was rough, but we did ultimately succeed, and we attribute our success partly to the three ground rules we developed over time.
Having a lot of space is important to us
Our motto is “intimacy and independence.” We enjoy spending time both together and apart, so we give each other a lot of freedom, spending about four weeks a year on our own. We have an ideal opportunity to practice this, as we live part of the year in Guanajuato, Mexico, and part of the year in California. In the fall, I fly from our home in California to Guanajuato about two weeks before Barry, and in the spring, he returns to California two weeks earlier than I do.
The disruption in our marriage routine feels liberating, since all our usual patterns loosen up — sleeping, eating, and socializing differently. For example, in Guanajuato, I join a Sunday women’s hiking group, which I rarely do when Barry’s in town because on Sundays we go cycling. Of course, we also give each other space when we’re together, but the period of two weeks apart twice a year gives us even more time to replenish.
We don’t play tit-for-tat
Let’s say I wash the dishes after dinner one evening. The next morning, I don’t get to say, “I washed them last night, so it’s your turn.” In other words, we can’t use a choice we made as a bargaining chip.
We can wash the dishes or not wash the dishes, but if we choose to do them, the action stands alone, free of expectations or obligations. Our goal is to either do things freely or not at all. It’s not a perfect system, of course, but rarely does either of us feel like a martyr.
Score-keeping was a huge source of contention with his first wife, and it was clear early on that Barry wanted to change that pattern. I agree that it’s been good for us.
We don’t bring up painful history
Revisiting difficult issues was once our toughest issue. In the past, sometimes one or the other of us (OK, usually me!) would bring up an old hurt, and we would delve back into our history and try to hash things out. Rarely did this work. Frequently we wouldn’t even agree on what had happened in the first place, and resentments would inevitably resurface.
Sometimes we’d be “processing” (a word Barry now abhors), and he’d say, “Does everything always have to be a workshop around here?” (I’d remind him, though, that we did meet in a workshop, after all!) So, as a sort of compromise, we’ve developed what we call our “statute of limitations,” which is a point when we agree to no longer bring up a past conflict.
It’s not that we don’t try to resolve conflicts if one of us does something that bothers the other. But after a couple of conversations, assuming we’ve reached a resolution — even if it’s not perfect — then the subject is closed. At that point, it’s no longer “our” problem; it’s his problem or mine, to handle independently: discuss it with a friend, write about it, or otherwise sort it out on our own without involving the other.
Our system works for us, even if we do screw up occasionally
Of course, we sometimes screw up. One of us occasionally does play tit-for-tat, or brings up something that we have closed the book on. If we do, the other says, “Hey, remember?”
These agreements didn’t arrive preserved, polished, and ready-made. Hardly! They evolved gradually, over years and years of practice, disagreements, difficult conversations, therapy, psychedelics, and what we call “our dome” — meaning the safe place where we share with deep honesty something that is troubling us about the other. Hammering out our ground rules along the winding road of our marriage is part of what made us resilient.
And they have given us a deep foundation of trust. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to feel safe with each other, enjoy our lives as fully, or have so much fun together.
Quite simply, without these ground rules, we wouldn’t be who we are.
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