Member-only story
Relationship? Maybe?
There is a secret to a lasting relationship.
A lasting relationship doesn’t just depend on time to last. No, there is a lot of work that goes into making it happen. And we can quit now; I just gave away the secret: WORK. Sorry (not really), if you get past this point, we’ll make it through the rest of this story.
I’ve been married a total of fifty-five years. It’s taken two women for me to get to that number. I married for the first time at age eighteen. I was in the Air Force; she was in Los Angeles. The WATTS riots were in progress, and ashes were in her front yard. She called and said she was scared. We talked for a few minutes and decided she should move to Tacoma, WA, to marry me.
That had to be one of the worst proposals ever. Also, it was one of the worst reasons ever. However, we made it work for just shy of twenty-six years and had six children.
When I was single, people used to ask about it, and I joked it was twenty-six years of hard time (I imagined prison hard time). The only reason we were civil and stayed together was six kids.
From the moment it began, I didn’t know what to do. Neither did she. I thought I was marrying a redhead. After the wedding night, I realized she lied about that, and it seemed to be downhill from there. Compromise and a strong desire to be a good parent kept the…
