COLUMN: Viewpoint – Celebrating 50 years of marriage

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2023 (681 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Today my husband Dave and I are marking our 50th wedding anniversary. We got married the morning of August 17, 1973, at Grace Mennonite Church in Steinbach. The little white building on First Street where our wedding took place is no longer standing. The minister who married us has passed away as has our best man. But we are still here and still together.

My Mom confided on the occasion of our 25th wedding anniversary that my Dad had predicated our marriage wouldn’t last six months. Dad was usually pretty insightful. How did our marriage last for five decades despite his dire prediction? I think there are probably lots of reasons.

The two of us are very different people with diverse personalities and unique skills so we can get through tough times by combining our individual strengths and compensating for our individual weaknesses. Our different interests have meant we do many things on our own and don’t depend solely on each other for fulfillment and happiness and that’s been healthy.

We both come from close families and we owe the survival of our marriage in large part to the support we received from them. Our parents were great role models when it came to loyal marriage relationships. They helped us out financially, did childcare, provided mountains of garden produce, hosted special celebrations, planned family trips, gave medical advice, lent a listening ear, affirmed our career and parenting efforts, and prayed for us. Our own children and grandchildren have drawn us closer together as we work as a team to try and support them the way our parents supported us.

We were able to establish ourselves in careers that we found rewarding but also afforded us a measure of financial security. In our early years of marriage, when we were paying off student loans and investing for the first time in a home and a car and education funds for our kids, one of the things we argued about the most often was money. Not having to worry about that later on really eased the tension and helped our marriage last.

We fight. Last year just before Dave and I left on a road trip a long-time friend who knows us very well sent us a text wishing us safe travels and saying, “Don’t fight too much.” I think our fights are good for our marriage because we can express our frustrations and get them out in the open. I think over the years we have both grown much wiser when it comes to deciding which things are worth fighting about and which aren’t.

We’ve been lucky. The longer I’m married the more I realize what a ‘roll of the dice’ it is when you choose your life partner. You don’t really know your spouse when you marry. Throughout your life together you are continually learning new things about each other, some good and some hard. You certainly have no idea when you get married what kind of difficulties and challenges life may throw at you as a couple. Like everyone else we’ve had to weather our fair share.

I know just how lucky I have been to have landed up with a partner who has a sense of humour, is intelligent, wins friends easily, is active and interested in so many different things, relishes new experiences and adventures and has made my life anything but boring.

Dave and I have been awfully lucky to have made it to the fifty-year mark in our marriage. I’ve got my fingers crossed we’ll be able to celebrate quite a few more anniversaries together.