Staying in Like is the Hard Part

When people find out that I have been married for over twenty-five years, one question usually comes up: how do you stay in love with the same person for all that time? My answer is always the same: staying in love isn't the problem at all, it is the staying in like that is the killer. Understanding that you might not always like the person you are married to and realizing that you will always have to work at loving each other is the way to make marriage fulfilling and long lasting.

I have been in love with my husband since a particular day twenty-seven years ago when he sat across from me in Taco Bell and stumbled over his words trying to explain his feelings for me. I knew then and there that my heart belonged to him and it always would. I have never once doubted that love, not on the day he asked me to marry him, not on our wedding day, not five years, ten years, even twenty-five years later. What is more, I never doubted that love when we experienced the hard times, the times where we could barely look at each other.

Ask me have I always liked this man and I will tell you absolutely, undoubtedly and with utter conviction "NO." In fact, the very first time I remember not liking him was shortly after the lunch at Taco Bell. We got into some stupid fight about an ex-boyfriend and I thought he was acting like the biggest jerk possible. I wondered how in the world I could like a man that was acting like a twelve-year-old. I didn't, but I still loved him.

Understanding in a marriage that things will not always be smooth and that you might not always be blissfully happy with your mate is probably the most fundamental advice any person contemplating the big step could get. Loving each other is required, liking each all the time is not. To love each other the entire time, you have to fight for your relationship. You commit yourself totally to never forgetting, even in the bad times, the special feelings you hold for that other person. Remembering what caused you to fall in love and building on that love is the glue that cements it all together. The memories you make, both good and bad, are how you bond and blend two people into a single marriage. My husband alone knows the feeling in my heart the day I first held our children. He knows, like no other, the happiness I felt when I was accepted into school. And he shares the pain of the memory of the seven months we spent separated, unable to work out our stubborn differences as we contemplated throwing in the towel on our marriage. It is those shared feelings that bond our continual love.

So, while I might tell someone who asks me how I feel about my husband, that I am so mad at him I could spit, or that we aren't speaking because of a fight we are waging over the electric bill, I will quickly follow with the fact that I really do love the man. And I do. If I didn't, I wouldn't and couldn't have spent the last twenty-five years with him.