***Will Marriage Improve With Time?

By America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts.

In our many travels around the world conducting our marriage research, we are often ask this question – “Does Marriage Improve With Age?” The answer is, YES! Here’s why.

We have interviewed successfully marriage couples on six continents in 45 countries around the world. We head to the 7th and final continent, Antarctica, in January of 2012. For nearly three decades our research has been our labor of love. We have discovered much about what makes for a successful marriage. We are in many ways, the “doctors of love and marriage.” It has been our passion. It has been our reason for being.

Successful marriages and relationships, like fine wine, do get better with age. There are many reasons why, but following are a few of the most significant and important findings of our research:

Reason 1 – Imagine spending 30 or more years with someone! You know everything about them. You know their strengths, their weaknesses, their hot buttons, their failings, their likes and dislikes, and their deepest and darkest secrets. You are each other’s best friends and support each other in every thing you do. When you are in this kind of relationship with someone, you are most likely more intimately connected to this person than anyone on Earth! And honestly, can you imagine a better place to be with another human being? We think not, and our research around the world supports this simple notion – familiarity does not breed contempt amongst people who deeply love each other. Familiarity and intimacy with someone you love is one of the greatest joys on Earth according to those we have interviewed who have been married for 30-77 years.

Reason 2 – – The longer you are successfully married to someone the more you realize this simple fact – you cannot imagine anyone you would rather spend your time with. We can report that long-term, happy, and successfully married couples would rather spend time with their spouse than anyone else. There should be nothing mysterious about this finding. The longer you are married, the more you get comfortable being with the one you love. Spending time WITH their spouse is much more rewarding than spending their time alone.

Reason 3 – – Can you imagine preparing and eating most of your daily meals with one person for 30+ years? There are a lot of people out there in the real world, across continents and cultures, who have been married for more than three decades of life, and whose rituals include garnering their daily sustenance in the presence of the same person. When you choose to break daily bread with someone for most of a lifetime, there is one undeniable fact – you love that person so much that you find sharing a meal with them is a necessary and highly important part of your day. Marriage does improve with age. Our research would suggest that there is no denying that.

Reason 4 – – There is one undeniable truth of life – spending your life with someone you love makes you much more happy than spending your life alone. Our research around the world reveals a number of significant findings, but none more important than this, absence from the one you love does not make your love grow fonder! Spending time with the one you love is habit forming. Spending time with the one you love makes the heart grow fonder. Loving someone completely and intimately over the adult life span is one of the greatest gifts of life. Long time successfully married couples around the world report that they cannot imagine life without their spouse.

Reason 5 – – And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the longer successfully married couples are married, the more likely they are to get toxic people out of their lives. The longer you are married the more likely you are to avoid people who make you unhappy and who give you stress. Many of the couples we have interviewed tell us this – life is too short to have it poisoned by people who don’t really care for you, who don’t share your likes and dislikes, and who make you unhappy. The best marriages learn the most important lesson of life – don’t surround yourself with people who don’t love you and who don’t share your value system. Life is, indeed, too short. Successfully married couples know their priorities and spend their time wisely avoiding dislikable people.

You see, there really are important life lessons to be learned as you travel through time with someone you love. Those lessons will sustain your love, they will nourish your love, and they will ensure a love that will last a lifetime. Those who have been successfully married for much of their lifetime talk openly about the importance of these lessons.

In love and marriage the simple things matter. Love well!

By Dr. Charles D. Schmitz and Dr. Elizabeth A. Schmitz

*For hundreds of tips to enhance your relationship get the Doctor’s best-selling and multiple-award winning book Building a Love that Lasts: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage (Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2010) Available wherever books are sold.
Winner of the INDIE Book Awards GOLD Medal for Best Relationship Book
Winner of the Mom’s Choice Awards GOLD Medal for Most Outstanding Relationships and Marriage Book
Nautilus Book Awards Winner for Relationships