Shakespeare wrote, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”1 As this book comes to an end, that is exactly how I feel. This journey took me through twelve countries, six continents, and dozens of cities in between. Six months passed from the day I departed Los Angeles for Winnipeg to the day I departed San Francisco to return home after my final interview. That may seem like a short period of time to accomplish such a grandiose goal: discovering the universal secret of a happy marriage. But when so much of that time was spent in hotels, on planes, in front of my laptop, and away from the most important person in the world to me, it felt like years.
Now it’s time for me to return to the real world. To my life as a business woman, as a wife to the most amazing man in the world, as a friend to all those I’ve all but neglected for the past six months, and as a sister and daughter to some of the most wonderful people I know. It’s time for me to return to the very roots of my life. This journey took me away from all that for a time. But I’ll never regret it.
Yes, packing and unpacking, taking shoes off, and emptying all my liquid containers to go through airport security screenings can become a bit tiresome, but it was worth it. Spending more time away from my husband than I ever want to do again was challenging, but it, too, was entirely worth it.
I set out on my trip around the world to prove two things. First, happy marriages are alive and well. The cries of their demise have been highly exaggerated, and couples happily married do indeed exist. Second, there are universal truths to happy and successful marriages, and any couple can apply them to create the marriage they always dreamed of but never knew was possible.
My lofty goal of finding one million happy wives feels that much more doable. We’re more than 20 percent of the way there, and I am optimistic that you sharing this book with others is going to help me find the other 80 percent.
Happy marriage is not an oxymoron. There are couples in every corner of every continent enjoying the life that seems to elude so many. And based on my interaction with them, they are more than happy to share their secrets with anyone and everyone who asks the question and has the heart to listen.
This was never meant to be a self-help book. I’m hesitant to give any advice because as Jean-Alain’s wise uncle once told him, sometimes the best advice is to give no advice at all. But I know so many of you, like me, know people whose marriages are falling by the wayside. And although this book wasn’t written to give advice, I thought it might be helpful to succinctly relay what I learned throughout this journey. This is all covered by one important approach to life and marriage: happiness is a choice.
Twelve Secrets of a Great Marriage
1. Respect: Each couple had mutual respect for each other.
2. Trust: Trust was an essential ingredient and seemed to be a natural result of giving each other respect.
3. Belief in God: The couples may not all agree on who they believe God to be, but they certainly all believe in a Higher Being, someone greater than themselves, and they have a healthy fear of disappointing God in relation to their spouses.
4. Laughter is the best medicine: Each of the couples have fun with each other and laugh a lot. They don’t take themselves or each other that seriously, and each can make jokes about the other without offending that spouse. Their relationships are lighthearted in nature.
5. Keep outside interests: Each couple (especially the wives) pointed out the importance of having interests (hobbies, work, etc.) outside of the home and outside of their family. A separate identity is important and keeps each person from “smothering” the other or becoming bored with the other.
6. Create a daily ritual: Every couple I interviewed had a daily ritual they’ve maintained for decades. Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, port and appetizers every night, etc. The purpose of these daily rituals was to connect daily and to always know what’s going on with the other person. These daily “connections” build trust day by day.
7. Date your spouse: Regular dates were always a must, even (or perhaps especially) when kids entered the picture. When the kids were young, many couples did not maintain weekly date nights, but they all continued to date each other throughout their marriage and to impress one another as they had when they were initially dating.
8. Support your spouse: Each of these couples supported one another through school, life changes, career changes, hobbies and interests, and goals and dreams. They constantly built each other up throughout the years. Sometimes the husband supported the household, and sometimes the wife did. Which spouse brought in more money didn’t matter. The respect and support of one another is what mattered.
9. Friendship is essential: Above all else, these couples are all best friends. Each person’s spouse is his or her number one confidant. They all have friends outside of the marriage, but their greatest friendship, the one they’ve spent the most time building over the years, is with their spouse.
10. Nurture your marriage: This is controversial, but every couple put their marriage as the number one relationship in their lives. Even those who temporarily made their children and spouse number one at the same time agreed that the elevation was temporary. Once the kids were in high school, they’d want to be left alone anyhow, but the marital relationship would need to continue to grow.
11. No Plan B: Each couple decided at the outset that they’d have no plan B. They subtracted divorce from the marital equation, and by doing so, they found they had a much greater level of patience with each other. Disagreements didn’t need to be resolved immediately because husbands and wives would be together and would find common ground over time. Sometimes they just agreed to disagree, but when that wasn’t the case, they approached their differences with more patience because they knew they had until the end of time to resolve every challenge together.
12. Choose your friends wisely: Pat and Henry weren’t the only couple who were incredibly selective about the company they keep. This was a common theme with each of the couples. Surrounding yourself with others who build up your marriage rather than attempt to tear it down was a must. People who believe in the power of love and the ability of a marriage to last a lifetime, these are the ones who were allowed into the inner circle of these couples.
13. Bonus: Happy Wife + Happy Husband = Fountain of Youth: This is not a principle but my own observation with each couple. If these couples are an indication of the general population, it would appear a happy marriage knocks ten to twenty years off one’s looks—no matter where you live in the world. The couples I interviewed are energetic, they look young, and they are all extremely active (with the exception of the two plagued by illness—one of which still climbed Mount Sinai at the age of seventy-five). Research has proven that happily married people live longer than singles.2 As a matter of fact, the Mayo Clinic did a great study on this topic some years ago, and it is probably the one quoted most often.3
Thank you, from the depths of my heart, for joining me on this journey. Throughout my travels, I often thought of you. Even though we don’t know each other, I thought of all those who would read this book and hoped your hearts would be touched just as much as mine. If I’ve done that, all the packing and unpacking, missed flights (because the airlines chose to overbook, not because I was late . . . sigh), and time away from friends and family were all worth the price of admission.
And because I sign my blog posts with this daily, it just feels right to do it here too:
Until tomorrow . . . make it a great day!