What makes for a long, happy marriage/relationship?

[Seeking]

Few men are more introspective than those found on this board and we have many members here who are at various stages through married life and long term relationships. I'd like to ask - given the immense honesty of those who post here - what makes a long and happy marriage for you?

Being FrankTalk, I don't need to iterate that anything goes here - answers as common as "communication" or as leftfield as "she needs to be a freak in the sack to make it last" are all welcome. Also, this might sound a bit weird as obviously all responses are anecdotal, but answers based on your actual experience of your relationship, as opposed to what you feel the 'consensus' generally is across society, would be perfect...basically the opposite of anything you'd find on the "Men's Health - Top 10 Ways to Have a Happy Relationship"

After getting implanted this year I'm looking to meet someone before settling down and really want my negative experiences of the past 5 years, coupled with the immense knowledge gained from this board, to give me a head start in laying good foundations for my future relationship(s).

As always, this is much appreciated guys.

[dg_moore]

As a friend of mine has said, 80% of a happy marriage is just putting up with one another. Without getting too mystical about it, loving one another, being trustworthy, and having each other's back are vital. Sex can be part of it, but is not a necessary ingredient - our sex life ended many years ago, and our bond is none the weaker for its loss.

[stephen54]

Few men are more introspective than those found on this board and we have many members here who are at various stages through married life and long term relationships. I'd like to ask - given the immense honesty of those who post here - what makes a long and happy marriage for you?

Being FrankTalk, I don't need to iterate that anything goes here - answers as common as "communication" or as leftfield as "she needs to be a freak in the sack to make it last" are all welcome. Also, this might sound a bit weird as obviously all responses are anecdotal, but answers based on your actual experience of your relationship, as opposed to what you feel the 'consensus' generally is across society, would be perfect...basically the opposite of anything you'd find on the "Men's Health - Top 10 Ways to Have a Happy Relationship"

After getting implanted this year I'm looking to meet someone before settling down and really want my negative experiences of the past 5 years, coupled with the immense knowledge gained from this board, to give me a head start in laying good foundations for my future relationship(s).

As always, this is much appreciated guys.

I'm new here on FT so I'm trolling through the boards' topics and I ran across this one. I was surprised to see no real activity/responses. I think it's a great question to ponder and one which is threaded through so many of the other things talked about here.

I had a 22 year marriage which produced three great kids but which just did not possess a depth of intimacy nor the other bonds necessary in my book to allow it to be given the chance to continue beyond the 22 years. Divorced. Met a new girl. Have been with her for 9 years, and married this year. They are so fundamentally different. Emotionally, physically, sexually...so different. It really does make one wonder how we prioritize and put emphasis on what matters most to us. My wife now clicks with me so strongly on so many levels so this is a fun exercise to write out. She embodies and practices so many traits which were missing in my first marriage (which began at such a young age...and you just don't know what you don't know...too young, too immature, not enough resolve).

So if we're going, as you asked for, on actual experiences in my relationship, I would say these all play a role to varying degrees, and that each of these have been critical:

- Trust actual, deep, abiding trust. (elusive to come by; utter magic when you attain it)
- Allowing Oneself to be Vulnerable (taking risks, splaying yourself gloriously and frighteningly wide open)
- Always assume her intentions are the Best
- Curiosity (genuinely wondering, asking her things)
- Listen More, Talk Less
- Be as Naked as Possible as Often as Possible (seriously. we're empty nesters. we don't need fucking clothing. it's fun and it reinforces my interest in her every line and every curve at every moment). Naked physicality leads naturally to emotional nakedness and that's just awesome.
- Brag about cool, good things she does (being openly proud of her and stating it, not just to her, but to friends and family)
- Take sexual risks, push sexual boundaries, talk openly and ASK for WHAT INTERESTS YOU
- Touch her. Touch her. Touch her. (in any and every situation. not necessarily meaning salaciously, although that's a given. but also...just casually and frequently touch her. she should just feel like you can't keep your hands off of her. that's a hell of a feeling for a human being. give her that. you may be amazed what you get in return)
- Ask her opinions on things
- Do some things her way even when you have no real idea why, and without any discernible resistance. Just say, "ok!".
- Admit quickly and openly when you fuck up. Never equivocate or make excuses.
- When you have sex with her...ravish her. Consume her. Make her feel like life as you both know it depends wholly on the intensity with which you are driving toward her, clutching her, and fucking her. Make sure you make love to her. Gentle has its place and it's critical. But so does fucking her into a sputtering, stupefied exhaustion. You both need both.

Just a few top line thoughts about the things which make she and I work so well. Will be interested if this thread wakes up. I hope to read others' thoughts on their successful relationships!

[Greg1956]

My wife and I recently had our 30 year anniversary. There is so much that goes into keeping our relationship strong. These are in no particular order.

1. Open Communication
This includes being observant when something is not being said. We draw things out of each other to make sure all is OK.

2. Participating in each other’s interests
We take turns choosing things to do in our free time. Sometimes it isn’t the way either of us would chose to spend our time, but we do it for each other.

3. Taking care of our health and bodies

4. Complimenting each other

5. Bragging to others about how lucky we are to have each other.

6. Automatically doing household tasks for each other.

7. Doing unexpected things for each other, just because.

8. Proactively asking questions about things we are each doing

9. Sexually, being more concerned about the other’s satisfaction than our own. Surprisingly, the result is being more personally satisfied.

10. Not hiding anything. For example, I still have the same intense sex drive I had as a teenager. My wife loves sex and for to people in our early 60’s we have great sex often, but my drive still wants more. My wife understands and I am able to masturbate in bed with her beside me. That way I can take my time rather than a rush job in the shower. She realizes it makes me more fulfilled so essentially I am a better man for her.

11. Sex is important, but not the glue that holds us together. All the years I had severe ED she stuck by me and we made do with the way it was.

[niarceel]

After having read my predecessors' posts on this thread, my post may seem redundant. Their thoughts were so thorough and complete.

I'm going to say things my way and hope they contribute something.

--------------

My first marriage lasted 27 years, produced 2 children. Some crucial element(s) was(were) always missing. We could never get it to work. Even though we loved each other, every day was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. With great pain, I divorced my first wife. I have never been able to fully identify exactly what was wrong with the marriage; we both tried very hard to make it work.

My second wife and I have been a couple for 28 years, married for 23 years, this year. We are both in our 70's. (Our marriage is also her second.)

About 2 years after I met my wife, I began to fully realize who and what she was. She was a Divine gift. I had never experienced Joy, a Divine emotion, until I met her.

We're different people but inseparably close, a bonded, binary soul. We have some ultra-important things in common that bind Us like a weld:
> We both wanted to be in-love with someone when we were very young. It was a life goal for both of us. I enunciated this clearly to my parents when I was 5 years old; they did not understand me, could not comprehend that a 5 year old boy could say or want such things.
> We both love our romance. It and our marriage are the most cherished things in our lives.
> We love each other completely.
> We trust each other completely.
> We always communicate fully and completely, at all times, under all circumstances.
> We have no secrets from each other nor from the world.
> We live squeaky clean lives.

In spite of the above list, having wonderful things in common is not enough to recreate what we have. More is required.

If you want an incredible marriage/relationship, do the things I/We do:
> Create your relationship as a romance.
> Make your marriage and your romance the most important things in your life. Let nothing be more important nor interfere with them.
> Love your wife. Love her more than you love yourself. Deny her nothing. Offer her everything.
> Talk to her. Tell her how and what you feel. Share yourself and your experience of living with her.
> Make your sex life your love life. Make sex a simultaneous expression of passion, lust, and love. Create this expression of your love as a Divine experience. If it is wonderful enough, you will know that it is Divine, for only God could create something so wonderful.
> I have made it my life's work to make and keep my wife happy, in an endless state of Joy and ecstasy. Doing this has made my experience of living indescribably wonderful.

It would be a serious understatement to merely say that we love each other dearly. I have struggled to find the right words to describe Us for years. I don't think they exist.

I can only say that my experience of Us, of loving her, has been Divine. Only God could have made something so wonderful as Us and the love we share. After 28 years, we are still very much in-love with each other, a phenomenon that usually only lasts 2-3 years from its inception. (Prior research said 2-3 years, 7 years at most. More recent research has studied the phenomenon of long term romantic, being in-love relationships: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thriving101/201102/brain-study-reveals-secrets-staying-madly-in-love. Yes, people can stay in-love, like us, for decades.)

My experience of being in-love with my wife could be described as a non-stop, emotional intoxication. I am high all the time about her, about having her in my life, about having her as my wife, about being her lover, friend, and confidant, about the miracle that she has a body that I can touch, and that she enthusiastically wants me to ravish. I never stop telling her how much I love her (because I can't stop), how beautiful she is, how much I adore her and her body. I cannot keep my hands off of her. I touch her every chance I get. I love every moment I am with her, even if it is just to lay beside her at night to sleep.

My wife is the Great Miracle of my life and I will forever thank God for giving her to me.

-----------------

What I just shared with you is far beyond happy. It is Joy.

One last thing to share with you: We may be telepathic, for lack of a better term to describe what we experience. We both know this and experience it the same way, but don't know how to explain or describe the phenomenon. All I can tell you is that We are always connected to each other, no matter the distance between Us. We always know what the other is thinking and feeling, and always feel each other's love.

-----------------

Seeking, thank you for your post. Your post and this forum have given me the opportunity to tell the world the absolute truth about our marriage and our love affair, something I have wanted to do for years.

The experiences of Joy, Love, lust, the wonderful and insatiable cravings we have for each other physically and spiritually, and all the other things We share for which there are no words, I wish for everyone who wants them. They, our romance, and our marriage, are the crowning pinnacle of our lives.

[stephen54]

After having read my predecessors' posts on this thread, my post may seem redundant. Their thoughts were so thorough and complete.

I'm going to say things my way and hope they contribute something.

--------------

My first marriage lasted 27 years, produced 2 children. Some crucial element(s) was(were) always missing. We could never get it to work. Even though we loved each other, every day was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. With great pain, I divorced my first wife. I have never been able to fully identify exactly what was wrong with the marriage; we both tried very hard to make it work.

My second wife and I have been a couple for 28 years, married for 23 years, this year. We are both in our 70's. (Our marriage is also her second.)

About 2 years after I met my wife, I began to fully realize who and what she was. She was a Divine gift. I had never experienced Joy, a Divine emotion, until I met her.

We're different people but inseparably close, a bonded, binary soul. We have some ultra-important things in common that bind Us like a weld:
> We both wanted to be in-love with someone when we were very young. It was a life goal for both of us. I enunciated this clearly to my parents when I was 5 years old; they did not understand me, could not comprehend that a 5 year old boy could say or want such things.
> We both love our romance. It and our marriage are the most cherished things in our lives.
> We love each other completely.
> We trust each other completely.
> We always communicate fully and completely, at all times, under all circumstances.
> We have no secrets from each other nor from the world.
> We live squeaky clean lives.

In spite of the above list, having wonderful things in common is not enough to recreate what we have. More is required.

If you want an incredible marriage/relationship, do the things I/We do:
> Create your relationship as a romance.
> Make your marriage and your romance the most important things in your life. Let nothing be more important nor interfere with them.
> Love your wife. Love her more than you love yourself. Deny her nothing. Offer her everything.
> Talk to her. Tell her how and what you feel. Share yourself and your experience of living with her.
> Make your sex life your love life. Make sex a simultaneous expression of passion, lust, and love. Create this expression of your love as a Divine experience. If it is wonderful enough, you will know that it is Divine, for only God could create something so wonderful.
> I have made it my life's work to make and keep my wife happy, in an endless state of Joy and ecstasy. Doing this has made my experience of living indescribably wonderful.

It would be a serious understatement to merely say that we love each other dearly. I have struggled to find the right words to describe Us for years. I don't think they exist.

I can only say that my experience of Us, of loving her, has been Divine. Only God could have made something so wonderful as Us and the love we share. After 28 years, we are still very much in-love with each other, a phenomenon that usually only lasts 2-3 years from its inception. (Prior research said 2-3 years, 7 years at most. More recent research has studied the phenomenon of long term romantic, being in-love relationships: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thriving101/201102/brain-study-reveals-secrets-staying-madly-in-love. Yes, people can stay in-love, like us, for decades.)

My experience of being in-love with my wife could be described as a non-stop, emotional intoxication. I am high all the time about her, about having her in my life, about having her as my wife, about being her lover, friend, and confidant, about the miracle that she has a body that I can touch, and that she enthusiastically wants me to ravish. I never stop telling her how much I love her (because I can't stop), how beautiful she is, how much I adore her and her body. I cannot keep my hands off of her. I touch her every chance I get. I love every moment I am with her, even if it is just to lay beside her at night to sleep.

My wife is the Great Miracle of my life and I will forever thank God for giving her to me.

-----------------

What I just shared with you is far beyond happy. It is Joy.

One last thing to share with you: We may be telepathic, for lack of a better term to describe what we experience. We both know this and experience it the same way, but don't know how to explain or describe the phenomenon. All I can tell you is that We are always connected to each other, no matter the distance between Us. We always know what the other is thinking and feeling, and always feel each other's love.

-----------------

Seeking, thank you for your post. Your post and this forum have given me the opportunity to tell the world the absolute truth about our marriage and our love affair, something I have wanted to do for years.

The experiences of Joy, Love, lust, the wonderful and insatiable cravings we have for each other physically and spiritually, and all the other things We share for which there are no words, I wish for everyone who wants them. They, our romance, and our marriage, are the crowning pinnacle of our lives.

I get you. Oh, I get you. Wonderfully well said. Achingly authentic. You two are indeed blessed. So happy for you both...

[oldbeek]

love her more than yourself. 58 years, then my wife started having emotional problems. Wont kiss, does not want sex or even being hugged. definitely doesn't want to be touched. We were so close all those years and I need affection but know it is not possible. Just keep supporting her.

[Anthony]

Ive been married for 15 years and would say we have a happy productive marriage.
1-Find someone that doesn't drive you crazy. My wife and I have both admitted that we weren't each other dream partners. We knew each other about 3 years before dating. at some point things just melded
2-Find someone that has the same values. You can disagree with each other about things but the core values should be the same. God, Family, Country for us. We are what you would call Conservatarians. Our politics align with our core values also.
3-Find someone that has the same drive you do. My wife and I are both A-types and very work driven. If she was A type and I was B type Im not sure that would work. She'd resent what she see as laziness and I would resent what I saw as putting career over relationship
4-Be on the same financial page. Dont marry a spendthrift if your frugal. That said, I was a spendthrift, my wife was frugal. this only worked because early on I gave her my checks and she gave me an allowance. She was good at bookkeeping and was happy to do it. Ironically what she was not was an investor which I was strong at. While she manages the budget, I manage the investment portfolios.
5-Have similar interests and a few your own. We love dining, entertaining, fishing, boating, home projects and antiques. She loves to read and garden. I love to hunt and work with dogs. That helps maintain our identities
6- I put this out there because of the hyper-sexualized content of this site. Take it with a grain of salt! Be sexually compatible but don't get caught up early on with a sexual "10" you want a 4-6. Not a prude but not a port star. My experience has been that women who are 10s out of the box are damaged. There is a reason they do ATM, PTM, Anal, BDSM and Squirting on the first three times together and it's not good! My wife was a 4-5. After 15 years a 9! Yes it is possible sex and attraction get stronger over time...

[DaveKell]

The original question has been answered adequately. I'd like to possibly vent just a bit. I'd like to punch the person who gave my wife a book called The Five Love Languages. She devoured it and possibly memorized its contents. Unfortunately for me, my wife strongly identified her love language as Service, meaning that she feels most loved when I am of service to her. I asked her how that was supposed to work. She told me I could do housework without being prodded, dishes, laundry, volunteer to grocery shop and a myriad of other things. She became relentless and adamant about it and insisted I read the book. I pointed out to her that she has ALWAYS, from the inception of our marriage 40 years ago, done all those things and rarely ever asked me to do it. Turns out, during all these years I should've been clairvoyant and known she wanted me to help. Problem is, I learned a long time ago I don't do things the way her mother taught her to do them and lots of times was summarily dismissed from the chore I was helping with. None of this was a problem until that damn book appeared with examples of how other women have great guys she has missed out on!! So, my advice might be to get that book and memorize all 5 languages and apply the one that gets the best response from your potential mate. Another bit of advice for a long lasting marriage like mine is learning to adapt, as in the way I have by waiting for all this to blow over (it mostly has).

An old friend recently contacted me since he moved to the Phillipines to stretch his retirement income. He's my age and sent a pic of his 27 year old wife. He said lots of old American guys are there for the young women who want old guys as mates. I told him I'd be right down if my wife ever tossed me out. He replied that after 40 years I'd probably be lost without her and unable to function. He's right. My last bit of advice is, based on my experience, sometimes it just works because it does. Despite the issues it just goes on because you're meant to be together. Take from these ramblings what you will.

[Gronnos]

The original question has been answered adequately. I'd like to possibly vent just a bit. I'd like to punch the person who gave my wife a book called The Five Love Languages. She devoured it and possibly memorized its contents. Unfortunately for me, my wife strongly identified her love language as Service, meaning that she feels most loved when I am of service to her. I asked her how that was supposed to work. She told me I could do housework without being prodded, dishes, laundry, volunteer to grocery shop and a myriad of other things. She became relentless and adamant about it and insisted I read the book. I pointed out to her that she has ALWAYS, from the inception of our marriage 40 years ago, done all those things and rarely ever asked me to do it. Local bookkeeping services see site Your Nooks On Time. Turns out, during all these years I should've been clairvoyant and known she wanted me to help. Problem is, I learned a long time ago I don't do things the way her mother taught her to do them and lots of times was summarily dismissed from the chore I was helping with. None of this was a problem until that damn book appeared with examples of how other women have great guys she has missed out on!! So, my advice might be to get that book and memorize all 5 languages and apply the one that gets the best response from your potential mate. Another bit of advice for a long lasting marriage like mine is learning to adapt, as in the way I have by waiting for all this to blow over (it mostly has).

An old friend recently contacted me since he moved to the Phillipines to stretch his retirement income. He's my age and sent a pic of his 27 year old wife. He said lots of old American guys are there for the young women who want old guys as mates. I told him I'd be right down if my wife ever tossed me out. He replied that after 40 years I'd probably be lost without her and unable to function. He's right. My last bit of advice is, based on my experience, sometimes it just works because it does. Despite the issues it just goes on because you're meant to be together. Take from these ramblings what you will.

it is good when the wife is an accountant)