You can either feed negative thoughts or you can starve the suckers.

Connection starves suspicion.

Bonnie and Jerry told me they never run away fro disagreements. They face each one head-on. "By holding it in, you'll begin to slowly form a negative opinion of each other," Bonnie reasoned, "which means you can't work out what the disagreement is.

Those who don't take themselves too seriously have marriages that seem to just be better.

Early in our marriage, we knew that once the kids were gone, we would still be married and have to work on it. So, we decided to pay it forward. We worked in the first year like we wanted things to be in the fiftieth year. I'm so glad we did.

Like most complicated things where it's easy to get derailed, their marriage was successful because they mastered the basics. From that mastery they could weather anything.

I've known plenty of couples who choose to ignore budding problems or dissatisfactions because it's easier in the moment. But too much of that for long enough, and you all of a sudden have a huge problem on your hands, or a midlife crisis, or a broken marriage.

Happy marriages are alive and well. The cries of their demise have been highly overrated, and couples happily married do indeed exist.

When you give a happy couple the opportunity to talk about what makes marriage great, it's like a water spigot you can't quite turn off.