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Happily Ever After
Try binge-watching a bunch of romantic comedies or reading a romance novel and you’ll notice one thing pretty quickly: most of the action leads up to tying the knot. Couples put a lot of time, thought, and money into orchestrating epic proposals and throwing unforgettable wedding bashes. But after the bouquets wilt and the cake is devoured, one thing remains—the marriage.
What happens then? In an age when marriages seem to be crumbling left and right, how do you make it work? Is it possible to live happily ever after?
Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth
The day they met, neither Eric Marcoux nor Eugene Woodworth expected to fall in love. Marcoux was in the midst of big life changes, leaving the Trappist monastery (a religious community) where he had been a monk as a young man. Woodworth was a professional ballet dancer, performing with several companies.
It was 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, not an easy time or place to be gay. Woodworth was having lunch with a friend when Marcoux, who also knew Woodworth’s friend, chanced into the same restaurant. Both men felt an instant and intense connection.
Woodworth said, “My body went cold. I was feeling electric shock. I couldn’t move.” Marcoux described an almost physical force that pushed him to approach the table and blurt, “Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”
“There was nothing else for me to do,” Woodworth added, “other than spend my life with him. From that very instant that we met. That was it.”
Long before marriage equality became the law of the land in the United States, Marcoux and Woodworth were married in a nonlegal ceremony by a sympathetic Catholic priest. They celebrated their fortieth anniversary in 1993 with a nonlegal Buddhist religious ceremony. In 2013, after sixty years together, they were legally married in Washington State.
The couple said that the key to their long history together was being willing to be vulnerable. Marcoux added that deep honesty in relationships is “incredible and liberating.”
Natu and Kusum Patel
Natu and Kusum Patel had only ten minutes to size each other up. It was 1963 in Anand City, India. Their parents had arranged their marriage and set up a question-and-answer session so they could get acquainted. While their families looked on, the couple talked about his studies and her interests. Mostly, they looked at each other, trying to figure out if this match could work.
A month and a half later, they were married.
The couple have different temperaments. She is chatty and excitable. She loves to visit with friends and travel. He is a quiet, frugal man who loves to read and work in the garden.
How did they bridge these differences? How did they cope when faced with the stress and separation of immigrating to the United States in 1975? Natu Patel said, “Life is an adjustment,” and the key is to “develop understanding.”
After more than fifty years together, the Patels still do things differently. He likes to stick close to home. She takes trips to Hawaii and Alaska with their grown children. Neither has regrets about their arranged marriage. They don’t always agree, but they never consider separating. When their differences lead to conflict, the couple talks through it. She says, “Conversation is good to unite the family.”
About their long marriage, he says, “Happy. Very happy!”
She laughs and agrees, “I am happy!”
Edna and Allan Nickell
For Edna and Allan Nickell, it was all about dancing. They met as teenagers in Vancouver, Washington, and Allan taught sparkly, fun-loving Edna to dance. They waltzed and tangoed through their courtship, meeting every two weeks at local nightspots and waiting until they were old enough for their parents to give them permission to marry.
Finally, in 1940, they became husband and wife.
Edna was seventeen, and Allan was twenty.
He drove logging trucks and worked in construction. She worked at a neighborhood grocery store. They also raised a daughter. Through it all, they danced. From ballroom dancing to square dancing, the couple was always cutting a rug—all the way into their nineties.
In 2014 the Nickells were crowned prom queen and king at their retirement home, an honor that sent them into peals of laughter. “That was probably because we danced so much!” she joked.
She offered two secrets to their long and happy marriage: humor and communication.
“Don’t be in such a big hurry to call it off,” she said. “The young people give up too quick.”
He said, “We generally talk things out.”
“We have our differences, I guess,” she said. “But it seems like we work ’em out. It’s hard to explain, you know, because you just do it. A lot of love, that’s what it takes.”
Love Is Here to Stay
A happy couple cuts the cake. Successful, long-term marriages require commitment, communication, and love.
In the past, saving a family business or keeping peace between neighboring rivals was a powerful incentive to make marriage work. Modern marriage is very different. What does it take to weather the ups and downs of life as a couple?
Relationship experts say that couples who discuss the big issues before they get married have a much better chance of staying together. They need to talk about finances, including how they will invest and spend their money. They need to talk about whether they want children, and if they do, how they want to raise them, especially with respect to religion. They need to talk about how they will resolve arguments, including jealous moments and conflicts with extended family members. They should talk about sex and fidelity too so that each person understands the other’s expectations. They need to reveal themselves fully.
For Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth, Natu and Kusum Patel, and Allan and Edna Nickell, the secrets to happy and lasting marriages were pretty simple—communication and understanding, humor and commitment. And love.
But as we can see from the history of marriage, love alone is not enough. Couples must work hard to make it over the long haul. Divorce is easy to obtain in many countries, and unlike in the past, it’s not always necessary to be married to build a family. In the modern world, couples often stay together because they want to and not because tradition or family expectations force them to stay together.
Modern families are multifaceted. They include stay-at-home dads, working moms, blended families, interfaith couples, interracial couples, same-sex partners, and families that are charting their own paths in new ways. No matter the shape of any particular marriage, couples join their lives with an eye to forever—companions until the end.