Transcript: 42 Years of Marriage!

Welcome to the US and Kids Podcast. I am your host Jan Talen. I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a wife, a mom and a grandma.  With my own marriage and with my clients, I have worked to help us avoid that pain of divorce and achieve the grand balance of being married forever while we parent together by using the D.N.A. Method of Communication. We know that working on this is worth the work, and it's very rewarding. 

 I have a little announcement today. The day that this is being released is the 42nd anniversary of my marriage to my husband Chipper. You're right, usually we call him Chip. I get to call him Chipper. Anyways, I thought well, what happens if I took a little walk back in time and thought about how we lasted this long? You might think, "Well yeah, of course she did it. She's a Marriage and Family Therapist. She better do it." Yes, so far we have done it - with hard work and focus, just like you. 

Marriage is a work of art, and it takes a long time and continuous work to keep it artful and beautiful. As you are engaged in your relationships, whether it's your marriage, or it's your parenting with your kiddos, or it's with being around other people who are married, remember that this is effort and work.
It's not a piece of cake. Although, sometimes it is absolutely deliciously wonderful. Sometimes work is messy. Sometimes work is aggravating. Sometimes work is meaningful. And, sometimes it's mundane, but it needs to be done. And, all of those things are true in a marriage as well. It was true in our marriage. Still is. The art of marriage is in doing the work, and it becoming more artful as you practice.
Remember, when I talk about this. I'm talking about how I've been hanging out with Chipper in marriage for 42 years, and knowing each other for 45 years. So what you see and you hear from me is from the number of years of practicing. If you are in your first year, or two of marriage, or year five, or year 10, I still have 30 years on you of practicing, and of refining, and of re-doing done. And, that's what you're going to do as you continue to build up your marriage and your family is you're going to keep on practicing, making it better, refining it, adjusting it. 

So that's my first part to you. I just wanted to encourage you. Marriage is for the long haul, and the core of it can stay very similar, if it's good. You've got time. You'll be married forever. You have time to change things. Where it's necessary to change it, go for it. You got time. It's not a waste of time. It's a good use of time. 

So I wander through our marriage a little bit, and I thought, well, one of the things I'd often ask clients is, "What's the same?" And so I thought, "What's the same for Chipper and I?"
Our names are the same.
We are about the same height as we were when we got married.
Our basic body functions work. They worked when we got married. We can walk. We can talk. We can eat. We can drive. We can laugh. We can cry.
We haven't had any major accidents or incidents that really change how we're able to interact with our world. 

What's the same still?
We met in college, and we were consistent and diligent students. Chipper also worked on what we call the “wax crew”, sort of, the maintenance crew on campus. And, he did that work diligently. I had two off campus jobs, and we faithfully kept those. We didn't skip out out on them because we wanted to date. We figured that out, and we've worked around it. We also laugh. What else is the same?... our haircuts. My hair isn't significantly different, some different, but not significantly. Chip’s was a little bit longer, and it had curls in the back, and he promised me that someday he would grow those curls back. I am patiently waiting. 

Our careers are about the same. And when we were in college, we were doing college jobs. Mine was always service-oriented, people-oriented. I waited tables. I worked in retail shops. I did those kinds of things. I didn't do things medical, but I did things that were customer-based: having to hear people accurately; respond to them well, careful whether or not they were enjoying what they were experiencing in the moment. And, that led into or fed easily into my career now as a Marriage and Family Therapist, because I'm still: listening to people; hoping that they're doing well; cheering them on; wondering what I can do more for them. It's expanded in its scope, and in the places and ways that I touch on people.
Waiting tables by bringing food... it's a little bit different than bringing emotional health. But still, they were making choices about what they thought would be best to eat, and they're making choices about what they think are their best behavioral, emotional and relational choices. Sometimes, I had suggestions for food, and every now and then, I have a suggestion for a relationship, or a behavioral, emotional thought shift as well.
Chip also is in the servicing people space except that he works as an attorney. In his career, even in college, he was very focused on the details and that makes him a good attorney. He also focuses on people and really cares for whether or not his clients are getting the best deal or care that they can get in the business arena that they are working in. 

What else is the same for us? We had basic love, and we were attracted to each other, and we attached to each other. And through the years, that is still true. It's deeper. It's broader. We hope so because that is good growth when we've been together a long time. But that base of love, we talk about it every now (and again), it's still there, and that is really a steadying force. (It) has been a steadying force for us. 

What else is the same? Our Christian faith is the same, in terms of that, we still have a Christian faith. It has grown. It has been stretched. It has changed and morphed. The core of it: that Jesus is our Savior; that we are forgiven from our sins and our wrongs, is still there. Neither one of us has walked away or changed, in spite of our faith be challenged in different ways over the yeas.

What else is the same? When we were dating, and it continues on throughout our married life, we still do weekly and longer term planning times. And, this has helped to hold us steady, because it keeps us from being too surprised. 

And ,what else was the same? We were determined to be married forever. Our parents had been married forever, and we planned on doing the same.
A short story about how we had a little help. We got married in Michigan. We stayed here a couple of months, while I took a summer school class, and then we packed up our Honda car. And, we moved across the country to California, and, in California, Chip was going to go to law school. So, we were on the law school campus. Remember, we've been married 42 years, so this is pre-internet days. You didn't shop for a place to stay by looking online. You didn't look for apartments by doing that. You went to the apartment board, like a bulletin board, and you looked there. So we were looking at the bulletin board for apartments and for other job options, things like that, that would be helpful to us.
And, a janitor walked by, and he said, "You new here?" (We've been married three months, right?)  And we're grinning. "Yeah... and this is a new adventure, and we were so excited."
And, he walked away and said, "You won't be when you're done."
Oh, we won't be what? We won't be married?
His sentence to us was "Kids who come to law  school, don't stay married." And, that was one of the best things that happened to us early on, because we stuck our feet in the sand. We planted our bodies, our hearts, our minds to prove him wrong. We were not going to have a school or career break up our marriage. He was a little angel, and he had no idea what he had set in our hearts to keep us focused on being married forever. 

The other thing that's the same is that we were generous towards each other. This meant that we were gracious about who needed to study, when the other person was done, and letting the other person finish up. But even as we were married, I had a job working with delinquent teens in a group home setting. Those kids had smoke breaks, and they would come and sit by me while they smoked. I'm not a smoker. And, little did I know that I would come home at 11:30 at night, my hair and body reeked of smoke. It was filling the room. I had no idea. I would snuggle up next to Chip. We would have some popcorn, and he never complained about my smoky hair one time.  Early on, that was very generous. He could have been crabby and say, "You have to go take a shower first." But instead, he just welcomed me, and that is still the same.
I'm not working around people who smoke anymore. But that attitude of don't pick on the small things was good. Be glad to see each other, regardless of what the look and the smell is like, and that is still true. 

So, let's move a little bit farther forward, because we had some key desires. And, when we look at the D.N.A. Method, we'll talk about this next section using that method. We didn't know we were doing it at the time, early on. But as I look back now, we were using our key desires, growing skills to make sure that that desire stays well and strong. And, we applied it to our kids, but we also applied it to the situation we were in with each other. So, if we were too tired, we applied the skill a little differently than if we knew that we were in for a rather intentional intense conversation. 

So, these next few things we're just going to talk about some, and if I blab too long, we're gonna roll it over to next week. We had some key desires. One of them was to love the other person well.
How did we do that?
Our necessary skill was we had to be patient. But, the other thing you knew that was a part of the fabric of our relationship was that to love the other person well, was to do things with them. We also knew that loving meant that we didn't cast a line of blame. We had to take responsibility for our own actions and emotions.
Usually, we went over the top to be kind to each other and to please each other. It's got us in trouble from time to time, but also saved us from time to time. Because, that kindness and wanting to please the others slowed us down from being too pushy and too brash or blunt with each other. We were both tender hearted. We still are, and words can come rather quickly into the corners of our heart and our mind that hurt us. So, we learned to be kind to each other. Those were our necessary skills to love each other well, were to be patient, but also to really watch how we interacted. 

The other skill that we used was being willing to sacrifice. We sacrifice sleeping time for each other. Often this was late in the evening, because in the early years the demands of school and Chip studying and my 3- 11pm work shift meant we would only see each other at night. And then soon, we added kiddos. And so then, we were up. We often had to sacrifice sleep time, and we did. We also sacrificed money... much money, because we traveled to and from Michigan, my home base. Chip was willing to sacrifice that money. That was a wise use of our limited finances.  It was good to reground us, to take a break from the intensity of living on our own little island. 

And, we were willing to sacrifice parts of ourselves. I am a little bit more of a clutter person. If all my things are laying out, I know exactly where they are. Chip, however, likes things organized and put away, then he knows where they are. We had to make those adjustments and sacrifice some of our, "But this is the right way to do it!!!" And, do it in a way that took care of our needs and our spouse's needs. 

Those were skills in a key desire to love the other person well. We applied them differently: depending on how tired we were; depending on how much money we had; depending on how much time we had. In the desire to love the other person well, we just talked about ways that we often approached each other or approached things: with a responsibility; with patience; with kindness; with sacrifice. 

Then there were also some habits, that I think of as skills, that we also use to love each other well. And, one of them was where we picked to live, because we had decided that we wanted our home to be comfortable and safe. So we focused on making our house a home, not a showcase. We worked to keep it clean and maintained. And, this blended in with us rather nicely, because we learn how to do things on our own. We fixed and repaired things. We painted from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. rather frequently. The kids weren't around, or sometimes, they were. Check in with daughter Miindy some time about that darling picture I have of her in her pjs. She has painted the front of her pjs, and she is having a wonderful time painting with us. I believe it was about one o'clock in the morning. (She was) the cutest can be. But, we just worked with each other. In order to maintain this, we wanted to love each other well in a space that was safe and comfortable. 

The other way, or habit, that we had grew as I went to school, and then off to work.  Chip took the kids two nights a week.. for years. I was in night school, and so, he had them some after daycare, through supper, bed, bath, and the end of sleeping. He played with them. I had to trust him that he will be good with them. That they will be good with him. That he knew how to feed them, and he knew how to get them dressed. I had to trust that he knew how to be nice, and he did. I had to give myself permission to develop other skills that were tucked inside of me. 

We worked together. I did a little bit of setup for dinner, because they were going to come in and everybody was going to be hungry. So, I set up for dinner, and he took over from there. We worked together here. You can hear all of those other skills that we needed for loving the other person well: patience, the responsibility, the kindness, the sacrifice. It was worth the effort, both for our kids and for us. 

We're going to move on. We had another key desire. It was to stay married. You heard that one already, right? From that little janitor, we had determined we were going to stay married. And in staying married, we knew that we had to have the skill of being faithful... faithful, trustworthy in our heart, and in our minds, and in our actions. We regularly did date nights. Now, they weren't always extravagant date nights. Early on, we were dirt poor, highly budgeted and very careful with where we spent a dime. So, date nights sometimes were a card table... (we were in California, remember)... a card table, a piece of tablecloth, a candle from our wedding, and a meal outside. The kids were in bed. It was a different location, so it invited us to a different conversation. We took date walks, because they were free. We went to the park.
Not every date night was easy. But every date night was important, because it kept us faithful to us as a unit. We had kids. We were pregnant within five months of marriage. And so, a little bit past our first anniversary, we had our first kiddo, and life had changed. If we didn't figure out how to stay married, while we added kiddos, we were going to be in trouble. And so, we stayed focused on spending those times together. 

We also had made a promise to stay faithful with how we used our emotional energy and connections and that meant we didn't invite porn in our house. We were very careful with the movies we watched. We picked: boring; sappy; not too scary, because Jan doesn't sleep well; not too sexy, because it's not good for Chip. So yes, it was often PG, but it kept us calm. We then weren't worried about where the other person's brain wandered. We were united. We are fine. That necessary skill of being faithful is an attitude that had to be followed up with actions in order to help us be steady. 

So, another desire that we had was to not be too poor. We didn't want to be broke and counting pennies our whole life. We grew up in middle class America. So we knew what it was to have our parents watch money, use money well. Both sets of parents had done that for us, and we had an idea of how that worked. We also had been in college for a number of years. And, we knew what it was to have: $10 a month for gas; $40 a month for groceries... We didn't want to stay in that place. And, we knew that we were going to have to work together to make sure that we managed our money nicely. What was their skill here? One of them was making wise purchases. Partly, in the beginning, that was making very few purchases. When we first got married and we moved to Sacramento, we went to the thrift store and we found two floor lamps. They were $3.00 each. They were ugly. We went in and bought a can of black spray paint, and we thought those floor lamps (which came with lamp shades... we just had to buy the light bulbs…) were wonderful. And, in many ways they were. They served us for years as floor lamps, and then as painting lamps, when we moved to other houses where we painted a lot, because we weren't renting. And, we had fun doing it. We had determined not to be too poor. 

I used coupons, a lot, a whole lot. I would cut them out. I would organize them according to the store, and I would go off into two or three different stores, buying only things that I had coupons for, because I was determined not to be too poor.  I would shop sales... only sale racks 70% to 80% off. And, I would come home with bags of things. Chip would look at me, and I would say, "Don't worry I'm not keeping it all." And, I would have the kids try on the clothes. (It was easier to do this at home than to bring them into a dressing room and trying to wrangle them all together. I would buy during the day. Bring it home. We try it all on.) And then, we have this whole pile of what was going back. And, I would return things, and I would say to Chip, "Hey, I made money today." And, he would go, "What?" And, I would go, "I returned $200 of all the clothes that I bought." And, he would smile like, yep that is making money, because it wasn't wasting money. 

The other thing we did, and this is so much honor for Chip, because he worked more hours than I did. He worked diligently. He stayed stable in the job, even when it wasn't really easy. He worked hard to please clients, so that he had return clients. He kept up a good code of work ethic, so that there weren't questions about his trustworthiness. The people around him trusted him and liked him.
I did the same. I didn't work as much, and I usually worked in private practice so that my work had a little bit different angle. We showed up mentally, emotionally, professionally, and that helped us continue to move out of the too poor space into just enough financial space to afford our kids which of course, come with lots of expenses.
And, I'm now into the pre-retirement empty nesting phase, where we're still doing the same things. Mostly promising our children we will not move into their basement when we retire. We had a goal to not be too poor. Too poor also meant we had a goal to be able to share, and that is something that we could do then. We did do that. And, it's also part of what we do now. 

You see, in the process of being married, we had to really know what our desires were. We had to focus in on skills and use those intentionally, even when we didn't feel like it. There were times when we were mad at each other, and we wanted to wonder outside of the faithful realm of marriage. We wanted to say no to a date night, because I'm mad at you. We stayed steady. It wasn't easy. We held each other accountable in those things. But, we also stayed kind.
At times, we were frustrated, very, very frustrated with each other, and we'll talk a little bit more about that next week. But, we didn't just give up. We stayed steady with it. We're gonna roll this over to next week, because otherwise you're going to get too bored with too much story here. And, your kids are probably needing something from you now as well.
So, we're going to roll this over to next week and talk about: our desire to have a family; a little bit about our spiritual life; and where we are now.
So, I'm hoping you're enjoying a little bit of this story with ideas about what you can take in that you can use to help your marriage move forward.
Being married this long has been a lot of fun. We look at each other and wonder how in the world did we do this? How long has it been? Some years were eons long... very, very long. Some seasons were very tough.
It was worth the work.
It is worth the work.
So, I encourage you today to: pay attention to what your core desires are; what your spouse's core desires are; and now work those into your marriage, so that you really do stay married together while you really do parent together.
And, more on that marriage and parenting stuff in episode 91.
See you soon!

~Jan

PS - grab the printable for great conversation starters each other!