Stick To It-Ness

By TAD BARTIMUS

How does a couple stay together 50 years? 

Very carefully.

Like the song says, "you've got to give a little, take a little…" Marriages that last are one long, careful negotiation. I had a friend who got out of hers because, she said, she was "just tired of compromising."

Staying married is part luck, part work, part abracadabra mumbo jumbo. The jockeying for position starts the minute a couple opens their eyes: he wants decaf, she wants high octane. He wants cholesterol-laden bacon and eggs; she wants a protein shake. He hasn't got time to feed the dog because he'll be late for work; she's late for work because she feeds the dog.

And so it goes…week after week, year after year, until one day you wake up – together – and realize you've been locked in this two-step for 50 years. Half a century. You can't really explain how you got here, except that, day after day, it seemed like the right thing to do. 

Oh, you bet there were times when you were ready to throw in the towel – or just plain throw it. Like forgotten birthdays, crummy Christmases, football season. There were days you wanted to run home to mother. And remember all those late-night office commitments, when the kids mouthed off, when your father-in-law came to live with you?

Later, as you became more settled, you fantasized about having the whole house to yourself for a month in the summer. It never worked out because you knew you needed to be there to say: "Did you remember to take your pills? Your car keys are over there. Don't forget your dentist appointment this afternoon." 

These are the little rituals of communal life that stitch up a marriage, hold in its sides, close up its loose ends. You not only finish each other's sentences, you do it mentally. You know just when to broach the subject of a new car, reveal a dropped zero in the check book, break the news that the cat is terminal.

My friends are celebrating their 50 years together with a party. All the kids and grandkids are coming, plus the sisters and brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews. There will be champagne toasts, photo albums on display, a veritable river of good will flowing across the couple as they review the high points of their life together since Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, before the Russians launched Sputnik, when Joe DiMaggio was still wearing a Yankee uniform. 

There will be much merriment and everybody will have a great time and the couple of the hour with be gracious and thankful as they count their blessings in public. But underneath the bonhomie will be a bedrock of intimacy only those two share. It was acquired through all the quarrels, all the scares, all the raptures of ordinary Tuesdays and special Fridays. It was nurtured by watching children get born, grow up and leave. It flourished in quiet talks just before sleep, in absent-minded pats while passing the cook at the stove, in a single "you look nice tonight."

After 50 years, anger has evaporated, hurts have mostly healed, passions have cooled. Being together is what's precious; being apart is unthinkable. 

My friends celebrating their golden anniversary know their marriage is an example to those of us rejoicing with them, but they didn't set out to become icons. They started out to be husband and wife, and that is what they have held on to all through the years. As we applaud their milestone they will be the only two people in the room who know how they got here; the rest of us will just have to envy them their secret.

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