I was a young teenager at the time. For months, my parents had been planning and anticipating a trip. A major trip. When the word Johannesburg started floating through our house, I had to pull out my globe and spin it a few times before I found it at the tip of South Africa. A postcard of the Johannesburg skyline was later pinned to our refrigerator. Mom put it there right after they returned from their trip. In the picture, skyscrapers were bumping up against the sky, and they were so dense. I hadn’t been to places like New York or Chicago then, so this picture felt like the center of the world, where every bit of money and power must’ve flown. There was a needle-thin building shooting into the sky like a balanced syringe. It looked a lot like the Space Needle in Seattle, just skinnier. As I slurped my cereal milk at the kitchen table and noticed that picture, I thought it was cool that my parents were so adventurous, so willing to take risks. It was inspiring, and I have no doubt that my penchant for adventure and travel—which is by far my most favorite thing to do—came from watching my parents, from seeing how they hooked arms and headed into the sunset together without fear.
For more than twenty years, that postcard had been blazed into my memory, a black refrigerator door flaunting the exotic and faraway Johannesburg. And suddenly, there I was, two decades later in Cape Town, close to retracing my parents’ footsteps.
I was on the eleventh floor of my hotel, overlooking the V&A Waterfront, which is a long stretch between Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned) and Table Mountain. It was almost like Venice, just not so old. Hundreds of boats threw their masts into the air and cruised on the water. Even more boats docked in the gently sloshing water of the harbor. Large umbrellas shaded al fresco diners. Statues of South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize winners stood tall at the dockside. In the distance, Table Mountain jutted up from the landscape. If it was indeed a mountain, it had lost track of what it was doing. It was completely flat at the summit, as if nature had wanted to take a little off the top but made a mistake and had to keep going until it was a bona fide crew cut.
As I started this journey, it was important to me that every couple I interviewed were not only happily married but also people the community extolled and emulated, folks that everyone recognized had a good thing going, and honored them for it. Dot and Ken were such a couple. Before my trip, I was three times removed from them. I would meet them through a friend of a friend, starting with Isabelle, a South African member of the club and a colleague of one of my closest friends, Jocelyn. Isabelle connected me to Ananda, who said, without hesitation, she knew exactly who I needed to meet.
Dot tried her hand at marriage the first time with a successful athlete, and I don’t blame her. Svelte, well off, and handsome, he was a catch that couldn’t seem more perfect. When she looked into his brown eyes, she couldn’t have known those eyes would be the wandering type, that followed other women they saw. Dot was devastated by that heartbreak and the ensuing divorce, and like many women who have been deceived, she built up the ramparts around her heart to keep it from ever happening again.
Enter Ken. His blue eyes seemed true and earnest—the kind that would only stay locked on her. Dot couldn’t deny that she was falling for him. Her fortifications were starting to crumble after years of sieging her own heart with isolation.
I love how Ken snuck into her affections and how he finally won. We were sitting at a café in Camp’s Bay, a trendy spot lining the ocean with chic restaurants and shops, when they told me this story:
“Hey,” Ken said to Dot, “I need you to block out a day on your calendar.” They had been dating for a while, and Ken thought maybe Dot’s heart had caught up with his.
“Why?” Dot shot back.
“Can’t tell you. It’s just gonna be a day for us.”
Dot and Ken went about their business that day, and she reluctantly blocked out a day on her calendar. She liked surprises, but she also liked control. Ken’s request was ambivalently in between, and it caused her some unease. Later that same day, Dot insisted on knowing what Ken had planned.
“C’mon, Ken. You have to tell me. It’s killing me.”
Ken paused for a moment, looked down in a show of thankful defeat, and said . . .
“I need you to block out the day because you’re getting married.” It was such a beautiful picture of redemption, how love rescues the buried parts of us that we purposefully stuff away and grieve the sacrifice we made. Sitting there, one thing was so obvious—Dot and Ken were dear friends. They laughed with and (playfully) at each other so much I thought they both must have amazing washboard abs. Twenty-five years’ worth of that kind of belly laughing has to get you something, right? As Dot gazed at Ken during our time together, she beamed trust, respect, and admiration for him. In turn, Ken earned that through his trustworthiness, his selflessness, and his obvious adoration of her.
When I asked Ken why he needed to get married on that exact date, he said with a completely straight face, “It was tax season, and I needed a deduction.” With that, Dot burst into laughter and said, “I’m going to get a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m a tax deduction!’ ”
Hear me when I say, as I’ve interacted with women and interviewed them all over the world, laughter has been a universal constant on their lists of keys to a good marriage. A well-timed quip can take the edge off a difficult argument that neither of you wants to have. It can erase a difficult day. I guess science would say it releases good stuff in your brain. Funny that it works for you and your marriage. It can even erode years of heartache and loneliness if you give it enough time.
But laughing is not just about being funny or being in a good mood. Those who don’t take themselves too seriously have marriages that seem to just be better. These couples argue less, agree a lot faster, and truly enjoy each other’s company. Laughing is contagious, and it’s so important in a lasting relationship, or at least that’s something I was quickly learning being around all these wise couples.
But it’s not as if couples sit around practicing their new stand-up material with each other. Laughter takes up the space between what we do day to day; it’s a posture of playfulness and lightheartedness.
Dot and Ken told me about some daily rituals they have that give them the intentional chance to connect and laugh. Each morning, Ken goes downstairs and makes coffee for them while Dot opens the bedroom windows. The morning air, filled with the heavy ocean, bursts into the room while clinks and clambers roll up from the kitchen.
Soon, Ken returns with a little tray, and Dot is waiting, with her back propped up against the headboard. “It’s our daily board meeting,” they told me. Even if they missed dinner the night before, this time has always remained sacrosanct, a place to debrief the previous day, share about the day to come, and talk about the bigger pieces of life. As they talk and sip their cups of coffee together, lights flicker on all around the city.
A connection every day is important for a number of reasons, one of which I was reminded of when speaking with Dot. So many women are afraid of their husbands having an affair. They live in fear because they’ve heard of it happening to so many other women. They don’t pay attention to the stats that show women have nearly as many affairs as our male counterparts, so their husbands are only slightly more likely to cheat on them than they are to cheat on their men. But nonetheless, that thought seems to creep into the mind of many wives, and they feed it. Having a daily time to connect seems to starve that negative thought.
Remembering Dot’s experience before she met Ken highlighted this thought for me. Connection starves suspicion. Plus, over time, it allows us happy wives to see past our spouses’ imperfections. Even in my short time with Dot and Ken, it was clear that Dot was an independent spirit and Ken was more reserved, a natural listener who didn’t see the need to talk over his wife or dominate the conversation. They were a living example of a great quote I heard once, “A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple . . . learns to . . . enjoy [each other’s] differences.”1
One of my favorite acronyms, probably the one I use most often, is AEOD: Accept Each Other’s Differences. Keith and I are incredibly different. He likes all teeth brushing to be done in the bathroom. I’m a big fan of scrubbing my pearly whites all throughout the house. He can watch back-to-back episodes of Landscapers’ Challenge for four hours straight. More than ten minutes of that show (or any of the similar shows he likes) and I’m ready to throw a blanket over my head. I’m a risk taker, especially when it comes to business and investments. He’s more cautious and slow to move forward. He’s cerebral: thinks through every possible scenario before drawing a conclusion. I easily come to feelings-based decisions and then confirm my gut (which is usually right) with facts. He uses words like “maybe” and “possibly,” and I use words like “always” and “definitely” far too often.
Keith carefully chooses his words and considers how they could impact all those listening. I, on the other hand, am not quite as discerning. As Keith once told me, “Sweetheart, sometimes your thinking and speaking are one action” (yep, working on that too). But we’re also similar in many ways, probably in all the ways that matter most: beliefs, values, respect and love toward each other. In the places where we’ll never quite line up, we need to AEOD.
We accept that neither of us will ever be perfect; neither of us will always be right. We give each other the room to make mistakes, and we allow each other the ability to fail. There have been many times when I’ve disappointed Keith. Although there are far fewer times, Keith has also disappointed me. But I’m reminded by Dot and Ken that accepting each other’s differences is one of the main things that set apart the happy couples from those who are floating unhappily through their marriages, or settling for “good enough.” And talking with them helped me see that I wasn’t on my worldwide search solely to write this book, though that was part of it, or to help the women in the club, though that was also a part. From California to South Africa, I learned that I was charting the course of my own marriage, the most important relationship I have outside of my relationship with God.
The sun was slowly disappearing over the land that stretched westward from Cape Town. To my far right, the tips of ocean waves reflected the sunset in one long stretch out to sea. Traditional South African music was pulsing from the wharf. Four young African men dressed in their country’s beloved rugby colors—forest green and yellow—sang and danced to the beats of their djembes with a freestyle jerking that was still smooth somehow. And I was pinning a postcard in my mind of the beauty as my time with Dot and Ken mixed with all the memories I had held dear over the years, memories of my parents that were now coupled with new memories of my own.