My separated friends never tire of asking me how I managed to stay married to the same woman for thirty years. Women, who are always more malicious than men, don’t ask my wife how she manages to stay married to the same man, but how she manages to stay married to me.
It is young people who ask the right questions, namely, they want to know the secret to maintaining a marriage for so long. No one teaches this in school, quite the contrary. I am no expert on the subject, as everyone knows, but that said, my answer is more or less as follows.
Today, divorce is inevitable; there is no escaping it. No one can live with the same person for eternity. In fact, I am already on my third marriage: the only difference is that I have married the same woman three times. My wife, if I am not mistaken, is on her fifth, because she has decided to pack her bags more times than I have. The secret to marriage is not eternal harmony. After the inevitable arguments, the solution is to reflect, calm down and start again with the same woman. The secret, after all, is to renew your marriage, not to look for a new one. This requires some attention and care that is often forgotten in the daily life of a couple. From time to time, it is necessary to renew the relationship. From time to time, it is necessary to start dating again, to start courting again, to start selling yourself, to seduce and be seduced. How long has it been since you went out dancing? How long has it been since you tried to win her or him over as if your partner were a potential suitor? How long has it been since you had a honeymoon, without the children constantly fighting for your undivided attention?
Not to mention the weight you’ve gained since getting married. A woman and her husband who separate lose 10 kilos in just one month, so why can’t you achieve the same result? Pretend you’re in a new relationship. If it were a new marriage, you would surely start going to unfamiliar places, move house or flat, change your wardrobe, your music collection, your hairstyle and your make-up. But all this can be done without separating from your spouse. Let’s be honest: no one can stand the same wife or husband for thirty years with the same clothes, the same lipstick, the same friends, the same jokes. Often it’s not your wife who is becoming boring and stale, it’s her friends (and maybe yours), it’s your furniture with the same faded decor. If you got divorced, you would definitely change everything, which is one of the pleasures of separation. Those who separate fall in love with their new life, new home, new neighbourhood, and new circle of friends.
You don’t need a contentious divorce to have all this. Just change places and interests and don’t let yourself go. This obviously comes at a high price, and many marriages fall apart because the couple refuses to pay these small costs necessary to renew a marriage. But if you separate, your new wife will want new children, new furniture, new clothes, and you will still have to pay alimony for the children from your previous marriage. The secret to marriage: there is no such thing as ‘marital stability’, nor should it be desired. The world changes, and so do you, your husband, your wife, your neighbourhood, and your friends. The best strategy for saving a marriage is not to maintain a ‘stable relationship’, but to know how to change together. Every spouse needs to evolve, study, improve, and take an interest in things they would never have thought of doing at the beginning of the marriage. You do this constantly at work, so why not do it in your family? That’s what your children have been doing since they came into the world. So discover the new man or woman who lives by your side, instead of going around looking for a new and interesting partner. I am sure your children will respect you for your decision to stay together and will learn the important lesson of how to grow and evolve together despite disagreements. There will always be arguments and discussions; that is why it is necessary to remarry from time to time, but always try to do so with the same partner.