successful marriage essay

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The keys to a successful marriage .

When you're caught up in the excitement of your wedding, it can be hard to imagine that you and your spouse might not live happily ever after. But sharing your life with another person can be a challenge, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with relationships. Marriages take work, commitment, and love, but they also need respect to be truly happy and successful.

A marriage based on love and respect doesn't just happen. Both spouses have to do their part. Below are some important keys to work on each day to make your marriage successful.

Communicate clearly and often

Talking with your spouse is one of the best ways to keep your marriage healthy and successful. Be honest about what you're feeling, but be kind and respectful when you communicate. Part of good communication is being a good listener and taking the time to understand what it is your spouse wants and needs from you. Keep the lines of communication open by talking often, and not just about things like bills and the kids. Share your thoughts and feelings.

Tell your spouse that you're thankful for having them in your life

Appreciate each other, your relationship, your family, and your lives together. Show gratitude when your partner cooks dinner, helps the kids with their homework, or does the grocery shopping. It may help to take a few minutes each evening to tell each other at least one thing you appreciated that day.

Make time for you two as a couple

With work and family responsibilities, it can be easy to lose the romance factor. Plan special dates, either to go out or just stay at home. If you have children, send them on a play date while you relax, talk, and enjoy each other's company.

Plan for some personal time

Alone time is just as important as couple time. Everyone needs time to recharge, think, and enjoy personal interests. That time is often lost when you're married, especially if you have kids. Go out with friends, take a class, or do volunteer work, whatever you find enriching. When you're back together with your spouse, you'll appreciate each other even more.

Understand that it's OK to disagree

You won't agree on everything, but it is important to be fair and respectful during disagreements. Listen to your spouse's point of view. Try not to get angry and don't let yourself become too frustrated. Walk away and calm down if you need to, then discuss the problem again when you're both in a better frame of mind. Compromise on problems so that you both give a little.

Build trust

Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling are serious threats to the success of a marriage. The more a couple engages in these destructive activities, the more likely they may divorce. Studies indicate that spouses who stay together know how to disagree or argue without being hostile and to take responsibility for their actions. They are also more likely to respond quickly to each other’s wishes to make up after fights and repair the relationship.

Learn to forgive

Everyone makes mistakes. Your spouse may hurt your feelings or do something that upsets you, and that may make you angry, even furious. But it's important to deal with your feelings, let them go, and move on. Don’t keep bringing up the past.

Remember to remain committed to your spouse, your family, and the life that you have built together. Support each other emotionally and in everyday ways. You, your spouse, and your relationship may grow and change with time, but these ideas can help your marriage stay successful over the years.

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• Marianne Fraser MSN RN
• Rita Sather RN

What Makes a Happy, Successful Marriage?

Predictors for satisfying, stable, and sexual relationships.

Posted July 13, 2012

A healthy marriage is satisfying, stable, and sexual . The following factors are most predictive of a healthy marriage.

A. Historical factors

1. Growing up in an intact, functional family

2. Parents were a good, not perfect, marital and sexual model

3. Both parents functioned well psychologically

B. Pre-disposing factors

4. At least 21 at time of marriage and not pregnant

5. Marry for positive reasons: to share your life with your spouse. Marriage not driven by negative motivations such as fear of loneliness , parental or peer pressure , rescue a floundering life

6. Know partner for at least one year

7. Commonalities in terms of socio-economic class, race, religion, education

8. Physical attraction with potential to develop an intimate sexual relationship

9. Discuss important life organization issues: work, money, children, where to live

10. Support of family and friends

11. Prospective spouse as a respectful, trusting friend

12. If cohabitating, treating the marital decision as a proactive choice, not sliding into marriage

13. Sharing important information about self, no major secrets

C. Process factors

14. Marital bond of respect, trust, and intimacy grows stronger and more resilient in the first two years of marriage

15. Develop a mutually agreed-on couple style for handling differences and conflicts

16. Wait at least two years before the birth of a planned, wanted child

17. Develop a comfortable, functional couple sexual style which integrates intimacy, pleasuring, and eroticism

18. Accept that approximately 30% of problems are resolvable, 50-60% are modifiable, and that 10-20% need to be accepted and coped with

19. Maintain positive, realistic personal and marital expectations

20. Use the guideline of a 5 to 1 positive-negative set of thoughts, feelings, and behavior toward your spouse and marriage

I encourage each spouse (or partner) to honestly assess each factor on a five point scale:

++ A major strength

+ A positive factor

- A vulnerability

-- A major vulnerability

Be honest with yourself; don't give the politically correct or socially desirable answer.

Next, share and discuss these factors.

Find your results less-than satisfactory? Here's what each category means for your relationship:

• Historical factors increase awareness, but are not in your control and are not changeable.
• The pre-disposing factors are potentially changeable. You and your partner need to share strengths and vulnerabilities in assessing your challenges in creating and maintaining a healthy marriage.
• Process factors are most in your control and potentially the most changeable. However, follow the guideline of factor 18, make wise decisions (those which will be helpful emotionally and practically and work in both the short and long term). A sign of an unhealthy marriage is making decisions that are emotional and short term, but not wise.

Remember, the focus of this self, partner, and relationship assessment is to empower you to create a satisfying, stable, and sexual marriage. If you identify major personal and relational vulnerabilities I encourage you to seek professional counseling to address these issues and give you the resources to create and maintain a healthy marriage.

Resource: McCarthy, Barry & McCarthy, Emily (2004). Getting It Right the First Time: Creating a Healthy Marriage. Routledge

Barry W. McCarthy, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of psychology and a diplomate in both clinical psychology and sex therapy who has published 22 books.

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Marriage Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on marriage.

In general, marriage can be described as a bond/commitment between a man and a woman. Also, this bond is strongly connected with love, tolerance, support, and harmony. Also, creating a family means to enter a new stage of social advancement. Marriages help in founding the new relationship between females and males. Also, this is thought to be the highest as well as the most important Institution in our society. The marriage essay is a guide to what constitutes a marriage in India. 

Whenever we think about marriage, the first thing that comes to our mind is the long-lasting relationship. Also, for everyone, marriage is one of the most important decisions in their life. Because you are choosing to live your whole life with that 1 person. Thus, when people decide to get married, they think of having a lovely family, dedicating their life together, and raising their children together. The circle of humankind is like that only. 

Read 500 Words Essay on Dowry System

As it is seen with other experiences as well, the experience of marriage can be successful or unsuccessful. If truth to be held, there is no secret to a successful marriage. It is all about finding the person and enjoying all the differences and imperfections, thereby making your life smooth. So, a good marriage is something that is supposed to be created by two loving people. Thus, it does not happen from time to time. Researchers believe that married people are less depressed and more happy as compared to unmarried people. 

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Concepts of Marriage

There is no theoretical concept of marriage. Because for everyone these concepts will keep on changing. But there are some basic concepts which are common in every marriage. These concepts are children, communication , problem-solving , and influences. Here, children may be the most considerable issue. Because many think that having a child is a stressful thing. While others do not believe it. But one thing is sure that having children will change the couple’s life. Now there is someone else besides them whose responsibilities and duties are to be done by the parents. 

Another concept in marriage is problem-solving where it is important to realize that you can live on your own every day. Thus, it is important to find solutions to some misunderstandings together. This is one of the essential parts of a marriage. Communication also plays a huge role in marriage. Thus, the couple should act friends, in fact, be,t friends. There should be no secret between the couple and no one should hide anything. So, both persons should do what they feel comfortable. It is not necessary to think that marriage is difficult and thus it makes you feel busy and unhappy all the time. 

Marriage is like a huge painting where you brush your movements and create your own love story. 

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Ten Secrets to a Successful Marriage

• By Mitch Temple
• July 9, 2021

In This Series:

• 1. Keeping Romance Alive
• 2. Ten Secrets to a Successful Marriage
• 3. Does the Honeymoon Have to End?
• 4. Dr. Bill Maier on Romance

Spouses in a successful marriage are savvy. They read books, attend seminars, browse Web articles and observe other successful marriages. However, successful couples will tell you that they also learn by experience — trial and error.

Here are 10 principles of success I have learned from working with and observing hundreds of couples:

• Happiness is not the most important thing . Everyone wants to be happy, but happiness will come and go. Successful couples learn to intentionally do things that will bring happiness back when life pulls it away.
• A couple in a successful marriage discovers the value in just showing up . When things get tough and couples don’t know what to do, they need to hang in there and be there for their spouse. Time has a way of helping couples work things out by providing opportunities to reduce stress and overcome challenges.
• If you do what you always do, you will get same result . Wise couples have learned that you have to approach problems differently to get different results. Often, minor changes in approach, attitude and actions make the biggest difference in marriage.
• Your attitude does matter . Changing behavior is important, but so is changing attitudes. Bad attitudes often drive bad feelings and actions.
• Change your mind, change your marriage . How couples think and what they believe about their spouse affects how they perceive the other. What they expect and how they treat their spouse matters greatly.
• The grass is greenest where you water it . Spouses in a successful marriage have learned to resist the grass is greener myth — i.e., someone else will make me happy. They have learned to put their energy into making themselves and their marriage better.
• You can change your marriage by changing yourself . Veteran couples have learned that trying to change their spouse is like trying to push a rope — almost impossible. Often, the only person we can change in our marriage is ourselves.
• Love is a verb , not just a feeling . Everyday life wears away the “feel good side of marriage.” Feelings, like happiness, will fluctuate. But, real love is based on a couple’s vows of commitment: “For better or for worse” — when it feels good and when it doesn’t.
• Marriage is often about fighting the battle between your ears . Spouses in a successful marriage have learned to resist holding grudges and bringing up the past. They remember that they married an imperfect person — and so did their spouse.
• A crisis doesn’t mean the marriage is over . Crises are like storms: loud, scary and dangerous. But to get through a storm you have to keep driving. A crisis can be a new beginning. It’s out of pain that great people and marriages are produced.

Copyright © 2009, Mitch Temple. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

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• Topics: Becoming a Stronger Husband , Becoming a Stronger Wife

About the Author

Mitch Temple

Mitch Temple (LMFT, M.S., M.S.) holds graduate degrees in counseling and marriage/family therapy from Amridge University. He served as a pulpit and counseling pastor, specializing in crisis, business and marriage- and family-related issues.  Mitch is the author or co-author of five books, including The Marriage Turnaround.   He is also published author in various professional journals.  Mitch and his wife Rhonda have three grown children.

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15 Crucial Characteristics of a Successful Marriage

The Marriage.com Editorial Team is a group of experienced relationship writers, experts, and mental health professionals. We provide practical and research-backed advice on relationships. Our content is thoroughly reviewed by experts to ensure that we offer high-quality and reliable relationship advice.

We’re surrounded by magical representations of fairytale love and weddings. Sometimes these fantasies can get to our heads and distort realistic views of how to live a life with your spouse.

Living and sharing your life with someone you love requires consistent effort and commitment. There are certain characteristics of a successful marriage that these couples must try to adopt.

As divorce rates surge, it’s important to know that although some marriages aren’t meant to last, you should at least try.

Read this article further to find out, “What are the most important things in a marriage?”

15 crucial characteristics of a successful marriage

For a marriage to be healthy and long-lasting, it needs commitment and love. These can make sure that their bond becomes deeper over time and that they can easily combat unpredictable situations. 

Furthermore, here are some characteristics of a successful marriage that can set any marriage on a positive path filled with understanding, love and mutual care. 

The question we ask today is what makes a good marriage. Most people confuse infatuation with love. Love is not a short-lived feeling, unlike what every TV show tells us and every other romance novel.

Emotions don’t last long, but the real decision is whether you stay devoted to your love forever or not. When things are fine, commitment is easy, but people tend to leave as soon as things get hard.

Instead, they should stay through the hard times as well. Love becomes a conscious decision to support your loved one when you choose to stay through thick and thin.

2. Forgiveness

One of the most important characteristics of marriages that last is the ability to forgive. Fights are inevitable and sometimes healthy. The hard part is when hurtful things are said, but your partner refuses to apologize.

One must be quick to ask for forgiveness and grant it. Forgiveness is essential as all humans make mistakes, but owning up to them is what makes being with a person forever all worth it.

3. Kindness

Kindness is one of the most important characteristics of a good relationship, not just marriage. Compliments are always appreciated.

Saying soft and kind words is one of the many ways to express your feelings for your partner. Even during fights, one must remember never to use harsh words.

Being kind and understanding of your partner is a great habit because it honestly does not hurt anyone too much.

These characteristics of a successful marriage may seem insignificant, but when practiced daily, they can save your marriage.

4. Commitment

The essential trait of successful marriages is being committed . And commitment involves avoiding infidelity in all its forms.

If you are with someone in a strictly monogamous relationship, infidelity is the worst thing a person can do. Not only does this break trust, but it gives the other person trust issues.

Infidelity makes the whole relationship void and empty. It makes all the “I love you’s” meaningless. One of the most unfortunate things is that this is one of the most common marriage problems.

Now onto the next characteristic of a successful marriage: quality time.

A successful marriage doesn’t happen in a day. It takes time to grow and understand each other.

We live in a world that runs on instantaneous results. We don’t want to invest in something if the result isn’t yielded in little to no time. This isn’t the same with relationships, and this is not how to have a successful marriage life.

Understanding the deepest folds of another human is complex and can only be done over an extended period.

Spending quality time and making each other feel special by dedicating a set amount of time just talking is one of the best things a person can do for their partner. Not only is that a good habit but also one of the most appreciated qualities of a healthy marriage.

6. Acceptance

One of the best tips for a healthy marriage is to let your partner be who they are. Once you pinpoint their quirks and behavioral traits, you start diverting away from what makes a successful marriage.

Marriage is difficult on its own; one does not need to nitpick at what their partner wears, does, goes, and behaves.

You are not together to remake them from their core; you are together because you accept them the way they are.

The fact that you will find the perfect person is a total illusion. Everyone has a different outlook on the world and their reaction toward it, and as someone looking to make a long-lasting marriage, you have to accept their views.

Adding these little qualities of a successful marriage to your marriage will take you a long way, a long and happy way.

7. Appreciation

Among many traits of a good marriage comes appreciation as well. We often take our partners and how much they do for us for granted.

If your partner makes breakfast in bed for you a few times, you’ll be very grateful, but as soon as you get used to breakfast in bed, you also forget to be grateful.

Appreciating these little acts of love, especially vocally, is one of the biggest characteristics of a healthy marriage.

8. Healthy conflict resolution

It is inevitable for couples to get into fights or disagreements as it is a part of sharing your life with someone else. But the characteristics of a successful marriage include the ability to handle these conflicts healthily. 

If a couple openly discusses and respectfully resolves conflicts, they have a better chance of letting their love grow deeper. It will improve their interpersonal understanding and ensure they can handle crises together. 

9. Aligned future plans

If you are wondering, “What makes a marriage successful,” look in the direction of the couple’s plans. 

Do their personal goals align with each other? Or do the plans of one partner go against what the other partner envisions for their future?

Aligned future plans are one of the important characteristics of a successful marriage, as it showcases the couple’s potential for togetherness in the future. 

Even if two people have different goals, they must discuss and figure out a compromise that works for both of them. 

Any discussion about the key characteristics of a successful marriage would be incomplete without mentioning the mutual trust between two people. 

Without trust, a marriage would be full of doubts, insecurities, jealousy and uncertainties. Trust is the foundation that allows you to depend on someone and their words.

11. Compromise

Compromise is one of the keys to a successful marriage as it enhances a couple’s ability to live happily with each other. 

Disagreements in a relationship can be handled with both partners being open to making concessions on their stance for the betterment of the relationship.

Research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies shows that the relationship is healthier when couples prioritize “we” over “me,” i.e., the collective desire over their desires. 

12. Respect

Respect is the bedrock of any relationship, especially a marriage. Therefore, it is one of the important characteristics of a successful marriage that we can’t ignore.

In a marriage, two people come together as they wish to share their life. If the marriage lacks respect, the couple can underappreciated and undervalued by their partner. 

Disrespect in a marriage can make the fights hostile and hurtful. And it hampers the longevity of the marriage as no one wants to be treated badly by their partner.

13. Companionship

Doesn’t a marriage seem easier when you are friends with your spouse?

Two people who can have fun together and enjoy each other’s company have a higher probability of staying happily married to each other

14. Intimacy

Sex and intimacy are important aspects of most marriages. However, some couples might undervalue the importance of the relationship’s physical aspects, which can become harmful in the long run. 

The couple should prioritize sexual satisfaction to ensure relationship satisfaction, as these are intricately linked. 

15. Evolve together

Key characteristics of a successful marriage include ensuring that you grow together instead of growing apart. 

Don’t ignore that one of the most important things in a marriage is that the couple stays on the same page. They must be able to retain their bond and understanding during the different phases of life.

Marriage requires the partners to develop healthy interpersonal habits that create a positive environment for love to prosper. 

At times of conflict, the couple may wonder about the characteristics of a successful marriage to ensure they can get past any hurdle that comes their way.

Partners who communicate their feelings with each other will surely be able to resolve any problem that may come their way. 

We have given you all sorts of characteristics of a good marriage and now it’s up to you to stick to these and make the best out of what you have.

Every relationship is unique, but these aren’t just the characteristics of a successful marriage; they’re important for every relationship you cherish.

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The Marriage.com Editorial Team is a group of experienced relationship writers, experts, and mental health professionals. We provide practical and research-backed advice on relationships. Our content is thoroughly reviewed by experts Read more to ensure that we offer high-quality and reliable relationship advice. Read less

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Successful Marriage Conditions Essay

The family is considered the basic unit of the society. It is where a person acquires his/her basic characteristics and habits. They say that the personality of an individual is very much affected by the family background. Once classical definition is that a family “is a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction; it includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, owned or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults” (Murdock, 1949). One important thing to note is that family starts with marriage – the marriage of two couples who are ideally in-love with each other and promises a lifetime of commitment.

Marriages that last many years provide a context in which researchers can explore how the experience of relationships changes across time and how social norms surrounding relationships influence relationships. Research indicates that the success of long-term relationships is related both to intrinsic aspects of the relationship, such as liking one’s partner as a person (Bachand & Caron, 2001), and to factors that are extrinsic to the relationship, such as norms and values related to the sanctity of marriage (Laner, Lauer, & Kerr, 1990). There is also evidence that not all long-lasting marriages are happy or successful. For instance, Dickson (1995) found that some couples in long-lasting marriages experienced high levels of independence in their daily lives and reported high levels of dissatisfaction with their marriage. These couples remained married because they believed that social norms dictated that they should do so. Research that has compared younger and older couples in order to examine how life-stage influences relationships has revealed that older couples tend to be more formal in their interactions and more restrained in their expression of affection than younger couples (Sillars & Wilmot, 1989). Additionally, the conversations of older couples are typically marked by communal themes and by a more congenial interaction style (Sillars, Burggraf, Yost, & Zietlow, 1992).

One way that we might better understand the experience of long-term marriages is by considering descriptions of past relationships. Harvey, Agostinelli, and Weber (1989) argue that accounts of past relationships help us see how individuals make sense of relationships; they found that explanations for why relationships failed were related to expectations individuals had for what was important in future relationships. Similarly, Surra and colleagues (Surra, Arizzi, & Amussen, 1988) argue that accounts of past relationships can provide insight into the knowledge structures that influence how people understand general classes of relationships (e.g., friendship versus dating), how partners understand a particular relationship, or how they see their role in a relationship. Thus, it seems clear that reflections about past relationships could provide insight into people’s experience of relationships and could reveal how relationship stories reflect social/historical expectations regarding relationships. Research by Weber, Harvey and Stanley (1987) examining the experience of widows and widowers following the loss of a spouse suggests that individual’s reflections about their relationships may be an important source of insight for researchers wishing to learn not only about grieving but also about the nature of relationships.

Kaslow and Hammerschmidt (1992) examined the factors that contribute to what they call “good” long-term marriages. They defined “good” marriages as those in which couples reported high levels of satisfaction with their marriage. They found that couples in these marriages reported high levels of commitment to the partner and to “marriage as an ideal”; high levels of trust; open, honest, “good” communication; shared values and easy “give and take” between partners; and a deep, abiding love for one another that was enriched by friends and family. Similarly, Fennel (1993) found congruence between spouses in the factors they identified as contributing to their long-term marriage. Overall, the most frequently noted factors were commitment to marriage, loyalty to spouse, friendship with spouse, strong moral values, and commitment to sexual fidelity. Laner, Lauer, and Kerr (1990) asked spouses to indicate what factors they felt had contributed to the success and stability of their marriage. Respondents indicated that their success rested on being involved in a union with someone they liked, being committed to the marriage and the partner as an individual, and maintaining a sense of humor.

Wallerstein and Blakeslee (1995) examined successful marriages of ten or more years to reveal what leads to a “good marriage.” They identified a set of couple types based on driving forces or unique aspects of the relationship that were central to the couple. They found that successful couples shared a sense of their relationship as unique and that they tended to tell the story of their relationship in a way that highlighted how the relationship provided romance, tradition, protection, or a combination of these elements.

Meanwhile, Dickson et al. (2002) studied perceptions of conflict in later-life, long-term marriages. Based on interviews with 25 couples, they concluded that partners in these marriages tended to minimize the relevance of conflict to their current relational situation. In other words, they said that conflict did not occur often, and they preferred to label their conflicts as “disagreements.” Additionally, these couples pointed out that their experience of conflict was much different later than earlier in their marriage. Most of these couples believed conflict had been prevalent and active in earlier stages of the marriage, but had declined later in the marriage. This research suggests that couples’ patterns of conflict change over time. Dickson et al. note that this may be the result of changes in the relationship and of cultural expectations regarding the conduct of marriage.

Research comparing actual interactions of younger and older couples showed that the conversations of older couples are typically marked by more communal themes and by more congenial interaction (Sillars, Burggraf, Yost, & Zietlow, 1992), but the communication style of a small group of older couples was marked by almost “constant bickering.” Thus, while long-term marriages can often produce smoother, more cooperative interaction, not all couples experience such benefits.

It is particularly interesting to consider how partners’ views of their relationships align with cultural ways of making sense of relationships. Wallerstein and Blakeslee (1995) found that successful, long-term marriages tended to capitalize on cultural views of marriage, for instance by emphasizing romance. But they also found that partners tended to be able to sustain a sense of the uniqueness of the relationship between individuals. By contrast, unhappy long-term marriages seem to be held together by social constraints, with partners in these relationships reporting that they stayed in the marriage because it was the “right thing to do” or because divorce was not an option (Dickson, 1995). Sillars and Wilmot (1989) proposed that the nature of the relationship reflects factors intrinsic to the relationship, cohort effects related to the historical context in which the relationship develops, and aspects of life-stage development. Thus, when examining long-term marriages, which typically coincide with later life stages, we see not only how individuals have negotiated their own relationship but also how cultural views of relationships have defined the relationship. One example of this from Sillars and Wilmot’s (1989) research is that older couples disclose less and demonstrate more restrained expression of affection than younger couples.

It is also worth noting that societies have some type of stratification system where members are classed or ranked such that some have more kudos and power than others. The family (where the married couple is of utmost importance) serves as an agent of stratification because it conveys at least initially its status to the individual. Upon birth, the child acquires his family name and a place in the society. The standing of his family determines his position in the hierarchy. Socialization also helps maintain class placement. Still, the family and kin group would still play the biggest part in helping members maintain or improve their status.

The family (bounded by marriage) desires to protect its members’ interest and welfare. It provides for the necessary protection measures of its members. The family also provides not only physical but also psychological protection and support. Kin solidarity and close relationships last over time and distance. This is evidenced by the fact that responsibility and obligation is continued despite separation of family members.

The family also serves a purpose for the other institutions. It has economic functions important in production, distribution and consumption. It is also a catalyst for political stability. When family members agree on something, the support of its family members is assured. It is also important in religion and education.

Nowadays, married couples and their families have different needs. Though the necessities remain, added requirements are to be considered. There are more people to interact with, and more diverse personalities. Media is already an important factor that affects the minds of children and more so on developing individuals. As individuals grow, they have to adapt to their environment and current situations. The current demands of the society are focused on technological advancement and people are more career-oriented. Individuals now live in a more dynamic and larger ecosystem. They have to maintain their mutual dependencies on a larger scope. People at the present time are fast-paced and quick thinkers. More than ever, time is gold. The values the family inculcates in its members now are more diverse, and scholarly. Education is valued more to be a successful individual. The changes in the field of sciences are also factors for the shifting in the practice of family ecology.

In totality, family members, especially the married couple, should learn to go with the flow and not be restricted on the conventional ways of facing current and future concerns. This would help in maintaining the continuity of human existence.

Indeed, there are no boundaries when talking about the ways on how to maintain or achieve successful marriage. But one this is for sure, the old adage ‘it takes two to tango’ still remains true. No marriage will be successful if not both of the partners (the male and the female) are working for it. if the couples believe do not believe to the sanctity of their marriage and do not do their share to make the marriage works, then it will never be lasting.

Bachand, L. L., & Caron, S. L. (2001). Ties that bind: A qualitative study of happy long-term marriages. Contemporary Family Therapy, 23, 105-121.

Dickson, F. C. (1995). The best is yet to be: Research on long-lasting marriages. In J. T. Wood & S. Duck (Eds.), Understudied relationships: Off the beaten track (pp. 22-50). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dickson, F. C., Hughes, P. C., Manning, L. D., Walker, K. L., Bollis-Pecci, T., & Granston, S. (2002). Conflict in later-life, long-term marriages. Southern Communication Journal, 67, 110-121.

Fennel, D. L. (1993). Characteristics of long-term marriages. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 15, 446-460.

Harvey, J. H., Agostinelli, G., & Weber, A. L. (1989). Account-making and the formation of expectations about close relationships. In C. Hendrick (Ed.), Close relationships (pp. 39-62). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Kaslow, F. W., & Hammerschmidt, H. (1992). Long term “good” marriages: The seemingly essential ingredients. Journal of Couples Therapy, 3, 15-38.

Laner, R. H., Lauer, J. C., & Kerr, S. T. (1990). The long-term marriage: Perceptions of stability and satisfaction. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 3, pp. 189-195.

Sharlin, S. A. (1996). Long-term successful marriages in Israel. Contemporary Family Therapy, 18, pp. 225-242.

Sillars, A. L., Burggraf, C. S., Yost, S., & Zietlow, P. H. (1992). Conversational themes and marital relationship definitions: Quantitative and qualitative investigations. Human Communication Research, 19, pp. 124-154.

Sillars, A. L., & Wilmot, W. W. (1989). Marital communication across the life span. In J. F. Nussbaum (Ed.), Life-span communication: Normative processes (pp. 225-253). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Surra, C. A., Arizzi, P., & Asmussen, L. A. (1988). The association between reasons for commitment and the development and outcome of marital relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, pp. 47-63.

Wallerstein, J. S., & Blakeslee, S. (1995). The good marriage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Weber, A. L., Harvey, J. H., & Stanley, M. A. (1987). The nature and motivations of accounts for failed relationships. In R. Burnett, P. McGhee, & D. Clarke (Eds.), Accounting for relationships (pp. 114-133). New York: Methuen.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Marriage — The Journey of Married Life

The Journey of Married Life

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Published: Sep 16, 2023

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The foundation of love and commitment, the joys of partnership, the challenges and growth, the fulfillment of family, the importance of continuous investment, conclusion: the ever-evolving journey.

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Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

Welcome to The Memoir Project, the portal to your writing life.

How to Write About Marriage? Learn How to Write the Personal Essay

I TEACH ONLINE MEMOIR CLASSES and work as a memoir coach and memoir editor, and in those roles I get a lot of requests for teaching how to write the personal essay. The essay is my favorite medium and most of the essays I have written and published take on simple, domestic issues stemming from marriage and family. The key to writing from home is to stay small. You are most likely to succeed in delivering a feeling to the reader if you attempt to do so without telling us what that feeling is. Navigating this space of showing, not telling, is critical to the success of a good, domestic essay.

What do I mean by that? Just this: Let the reader do some of the work. Let them do the math. Let them read it and gather together the details without you having to say something like: Hey, look at how someone loves me . Just show us. How? Here’s an example.

Read this essay and leave in the comments what you notice about what does and does not get said, and what you feel at the end.

I HAVE THREE FREEZERS. There, I admit it. I do. A born and raised New Yorker, maybe I have nothing more or less than a shtetl mentality, some genetic holdover from a time when there was never plenty. But probably not, since the closest I’ve come to Anatevka was fourth row center seats for “Fiddler on the Roof” when I was twelve.

And so it remains one of the greater mysteries of my marriage – to my husband, that is – that I buy chickens and freeze them, make stock and freeze it, make pesto and freeze it, and that every once in a while in the blur that I am as I whirl between the three freezers, I put something into one of them that, well, simply doesn’t belong.

It’s good he doesn’t take it personally, though that is probably because I have assured him that this started long before our marriage, and that I once located a sumptuous pair of alligator loafers in the fridge after thinking for months that I had lost them. They were in a brown paper bag, exactly the size of a pizza slice, so it seems obvious to me what my mind did when I got home from the shoe repair. Into the fridge, I thought, and that, as they say, was that. So glad was I when I found them that there were no recriminations. Plus, at the time I lived alone, so I had no one with whom the share the joy of finding them. Cold, though they were, I merely slipped them on and instantly regained my sense of balance.

These days, I have an audience, as well as several mouths to feed. Along with providing food for the adults in my home, I also cook for our dog. He has allergies. Seven years we’ve been at it. The cost of this is 14 sweet potatoes and 14 chicken thighs each week, and so an enormous canvas bag of sweet potatoes sits on top of the chest freezer in the garage (did I forget to mention that of the three freezers, one is the chest variety?) It’s the kind of bag that ship riggers use. Strong handled and sturdy, we need it for when the price is low – a recent 99 cents/pound, for instance – and we buy in bulk. It’s hard to lose.

Or so you might think.

Saturday was a cooking day for me, and so I am writing in real time here, reporting from the front. The last of the parsnips, all of the frozen vegetable scrapings, cilantro stems and other tidbits from the freezer went into the cauldron-sized stock pot. Back and forth from the freezers I went, finding tempting stashes of things to add.

“Oh look,” I said to the dog, “Chives!” The dog gave me the look he always gives me. It’s lovely to be adored no matter what you do.

My chives are now up in my kitchen garden, so clearly the frozen ones had to go into the soup. And in they went. And more things came to mind, and apparently I was wearing one of my many pair of glasses and carrying a mug of tea while I triangulated my way between my freezers. And then the washing machine sang its little song it sings when the load is done and the triangulation became a parallelogram and I added an upstairs trip.

The soup was creating that kind of happy haze it does when the aroma has taken over the house, and everything seemed right with the world. Out to the freezer I went again when I noticed the mega bag of potatoes was gone. Missing. Thinking it might help if I could see better, I patted myself down for my eyeglasses. Gone too. And what about that tea? Wasn’t I drinking something just moments ago?

Opening the stand freezer I was delighted to find the full bag of potatoes quietly cooling inside. Not that alarming, really. Many remarkable things have been unearthed there, including a portable phone and a book. It happens. And being a good wife, I called to my husband.

“Look, honey!” He came in from the kitchen, and that look on his face was the dividend check, the little extra I get from years of investing in this life.

The glasses? They were in the laundry hamper. Obviously. But it was my husband who found the tea mug, hours later, in that grand sweep I now realize he quietly does every day and last thing on most nights, simply putting everything back in its place so we can get on with our lives.

Tips for How to Write The Personal Essay:

Most of my essays come from domestic moments. Before I set out to write from my idea of home, I read extensively. Specifically, when learning how to write about marriage, domesticity or cooking, I can credit the great Laurie Colwin, Russell Baker and Nora Ephron for some great provocation. I read and I learned how to write the personal essay.

Have you seen my list of books to read to write memoir ? Have a look.

Want more? Join me in an upcoming online memoir class where tips like these are plentiful.

And if you have not done so already, listen in to QWERTY, my podcast by, for and about writers. 

Photo by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

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Related posts:

• How To Get A Personal Essay Published? Write it Like This
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Reader interactions.

Betsy Marro says

April 20, 2015 at 2:27 pm

Marion – I laughed out loud as I read this. In our house, we take turns finding what the other has lost as we wander through our home and our lives. I still recall the day that my cell phone rang just as I pulled into work. It was my love, speaking in that confused, amazed, indignant, frustrated tone that signals the loss of something crucial. In this case it was his glasses, his last pair. He couldn’t drive without them. He was late for work. He could no longer think clearly about where to look. “Would you like me to come home?” I asked. “Would you?” he said. And twenty minutes later there we were, retracing his steps. “Did you check the laundry closet?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have put them there!” he said. Which of course spoke volumes. I went in, opened the washing machine and there they were at the bottom of the drum, the lenses staring up at me. I didn’t crow or chortle or get too mad. By then I’d learned what we both know all too well, that it is only a matter of time before I’ve lost my keys, again, in my purse.

marion says

April 21, 2015 at 6:22 pm

Oh, that’s lovely, Betsy. Thank you for being in the club, and willingly admitting to it. Please come back soon for more. I sometimes forget what rich fodder is there is marriage. The everyday is the best place to go for material, isn’t it?

diane Cameron says

April 20, 2015 at 5:53 pm

Now I was waiting to hear that at least one of those freezers had a stock of Creme de la Mer–just in case, or your favorite red lipstick–also just in case. That I would understand, or for storing cashmere crew necks, which I understand store best in freezing cold storage. Chickens? Chives? Lordy–the things I learn about you.

Not even a small freezer bag of lipsticks?

April 21, 2015 at 6:21 pm

Small bag. The good stuff. The stuff I did not buy at the drugstore. How did you know?

Julia Pomeroy says

April 21, 2015 at 10:56 am

So funny, Marion, and so true. I love your home, your husband, your dog. Thank you for inviting me in.

April 21, 2015 at 6:20 pm

Thank you, Julia. I am delighted by the affection and friendship.

Jan Hogle says

April 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm

Damn… I’ve lost my expensive prescription glasses with the detachable sunglasses. Can you help me find them??

Great post!

April 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm

Found ’em. In the freezer.

Robin Botie says

April 21, 2015 at 6:11 pm

Oh THAT’s what husbands are for. Been so many years I forgot how great they can be around the house. I’ve been losing things left and right all this time. Cheers!

Ha ha ha. Yes, they can be great around the house. Thanks for coming by for a laugh.

Melinda says

April 22, 2015 at 11:11 am

I have a clear childhood memory of my mother standing in front of the freezer, dumbstruck, as she pulled out her purse. When I laughed she said, “I’m not worried about the purse. Now I just need to find the damn ice cream.”

Now that I am of that certain age, I completely understand.

April 22, 2015 at 12:18 pm

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Laughing so damn hard right now. What a kind gift this is you offer. Thank you. And what a fabulous thing for you to write about. Go on.

Sherrey Meyer says

April 25, 2015 at 2:34 pm

Marion, I’m guessing you can hear my laughing all the way from Portland, OR to the east coast! Such a funny story you’ve shared, and one which many of us can relate to in one way or another. I don’t have a chest freezer, and I only have one freezer other than the one with the fridge. But I do manage to lose things in that tall freezer residing in a garage that is really my husband’s workshop and not a garage at all. I’m wondering now if that’s where he’s lost all those books of blank checks he was looking for and perhaps it’s where I might find the springtime blouse I can’t find now that it’s spring. I’ll go look!

Kathleen Pooler says

May 6, 2015 at 10:52 am

Oh my gosh, Marion, you had me laughing out loud as I recalled my own stories of “losing “my eyeglasses which were sitting on my head or finding the box of Triscuits in the refrigerator and wondering who could have possibly done that?? I’m so happy I’m not alone in this. Thank you for sharing!

Amanda says

April 5, 2020 at 9:57 am

The cilantro stem, the dividend check (just beautiful – a ROI), something about the sturdy bag reminded me of my grandmother’s cool damp cellar. I had to read the essay twice to know why the last sentence struck me – the grand sweep, but it was your words “that I now realize” he does…I do the grand sweep of our night stands every morning. It is part of my morning rhythm after he leaves for work. And moreso, I pick up clues – an empty ice cream bowl tells me he stayed up later than me and will have a story to tell about an episode or a news piece, business cards tell me he’s mowing today, the gold PO Box key – he’ll be calling for it any minute. As I do the sweep each morning, I think of him and wonder if he knows how it happens. I suppose I’m waiting for that ROI!

Julia Grant says

April 5, 2020 at 10:14 am

It is lovely how you provided a portrait of a loving marriage through your articulation of your meanderings in the kitchen, the items you lose, and those that are found by your husband. Thank you for the lesson!

Wendy Komancheck says

April 5, 2020 at 1:46 pm

Hiya Marion: I’m glad I’m not the only one leaving things in odd places. Your husband should start a support group for men whose wives are forgetful! :) It’s the artist/creative inside us! My older son also has had to suffer with my absent-mindedness–but he thinks I lost my mind. I always reply, “I wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t until I had kids.) Said in jest, of course.:) Thank you for sharing!

Colleen Golafshan says

April 9, 2020 at 1:57 am

Oh, I relate to misplacing items – sometimes not finding them for years. This morning I happily found, from a pile I’d pulled out behind my desk, a hard copy of your recommended memoir books, which I wanted as I research my first memoir essay (after working on book-length projects). It’s about my years as a homeschooling stay-at-home mum, my failings and asking forgiveness of my two beautiful children, now rewarded with their amazing love in hard times.

Here’s what I heard in your essay: You’re a born and raised New Yorker, genetically but distantly Jewish. You love to keep food frozen and at the ready in your three freezers, which include a chest freezer on which you keep a canvas bag of sweet potatoes for the dog.

On Saturday, while whirling around creating a cauldron-sized soup–with parsnips, vegetable scraps, cilantro stems, chives and other tidbits–and carrying a mug of tea, you had to attend to your clothes washing.

Once the soup was on, creating a happy haze of aroma through the house, you noticed the sweet potatoes were missing, as well as the glasses you’d been wearing and your tea. You found the sweet potatoes in a standing freezer. Showing this to your husband, he rewarded you with a look, a paycheck for all the years you’ve invested in his life. The glasses turned up in the laundry hamper but your tea mug wasn’t found for hours, and then by your husband.

What you did not say in the essay: Apart from your preamble about the art of memoir which should show rather than say, Hey Look at how someone loves me, you don’t actually say your husband loves you or that you love him and the home you’ve created. But these facts well up through the peace you describe at home, despite the chaos sometimes caused by misplacing items. There you have an audience of an adoring dog and a husband who not only shares your joy of finding things in unusual places but who balances your tendency to leave such things out of place with his quiet nightly routine.

When you lived alone, it took longer to regain your sense of balance after misplacing your loafers than these days when your husband quietly ‘sweeps’ through the house at night to find misplaced items.

How I feel after this review is grateful for the peace you feel and share when New York is in chaos with so many affected by coronavirus. However, this was not a clear feeling on my first read.

As an Australian, I often feel at a loss to fully translate others’ communicated lifestyles into exactly what is meant, as I did when I first read this essay. Using maps and looking up word definitions helps (eg. shtelt). For example, I love listening to your inspiring podcasts, yet I often feel I lose a lot of rich context, especially when interviewed authors are from your area and you have shared history, far from my western Sydney townhouse. I’ve not been to New York, though I’ve stayed with friends and family living in Minnesota and California. These days I travel in books and online as I learn to live with low-grade lymphoma that limits even local travel.

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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Successful Marriage College Essays Samples For Students

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Successful Communication In A Marriage Essay To Use For Practical Writing Help

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The Taming Of The Shrew Essay Examples

Good essay about gay marriage, interview about marriage essay sample.

For this assignment I decided to interview the mother of one of my good friends. Mrs. Elizabeth has been married to her husband Jake for 25 years and they have three children. I decided that interviewing her will be very interesting and useful because they have a rich experience of a successful marriage and can share a lot of important tips on how to keep everyone in the marriage happy even after 25 years.

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