Redefining "A Happy Marriage"

I think something unique about Dan and my marriage is that we can stay up talking and talking and talking. When we were first married we'd stay up past midnight or one most nights (some nights till two!) talking and getting so excited about our ideas. People would ask "what do you talk about for that long?" I thought I'd share a short bit of tonight's conversation...we recorded it and I typed it down pretty much word-for-word:

We're redefining what we thought was a great marriage. We used to think "Oh, those couples are together and seem happy enough," that's our role model. But now we're realizing that we and a lot of other couples tend to live for their kids or to pay down their house. The marriage is kind of an arrangement to take care of their children: I'll earn the money and you do the work of raising kids. They don't take the time to make their marriage flourish and be happy and to be fulfilled themselves. Their marriage becomes an afterthought: after we've made the house payment, gone to the job, taken care of the kids, and taken them to sports/dance/music lessons we'll put our effort into our marriage. Then when the kids go off to college and the house is paid down they're like "Oh, it's just us." Either you can realize you have your marriage and that's all you have left and choose to make it flourish -- make your spouse your top priority; or people will say "why are we still together?" and then they divorce. Divorce rates of older couples have gone up some insane amount (I looked it up and the increase in divorce for couples ages 65 and older has increased five fold from 1990 to 2014; see the article here). I think these couples were probably pretty happy for thieir first 1, 2, 5, or 10 years of marriage because they worked on their marriage, but then they worked on ohter things and their marriage was only a secondary priority. That came back to bite them. We were even trying to think of the great couples at our church; some of them seem stressed out or running faster than they have strength because they're working hard on good things. But their marriage, which should be one of the top priorities of all, seems like it just survives; it just makes it; they're just maintaining it but not flourishing in it. So we are realizing we want to make our marriage flourish. I'll be sharing my experience with a more intentional focus on our marriage shortly. Meanwhile, what do you think defines a happy marriage?