Happy Valentine's Day

It won't be long until Valentine's Day is here and every year my wife and I end up talking about our relationship and the people past and present in our lives and the relationships they have or have had.

We have been married for 41 years and it seems like I just got married and it also seems like I have always been married. I can honestly say that I found the absolutely best partner in life that I could ever have and wouldn't change anything.

Ironically, I never thought I would get married. From the time I was a teenager my thoughts revolved around a career and making money. I knew I wanted to own my own business and become a millionaire as young as I could and I just wasn't focused on having relationships. I was always comfortable being by myself and I never could see myself any other way.

I won't go into how we met or fell in love or any of that stuff. I will say that the most interesting aspect of meeting my future wife was that she was very similar to myself in attitudes. She didn't think she would ever get married and was very comfortable with that idea as well.

Neither one of us were very excited about having children, especially since we got married a little bit older than most but still well within child bearing years. We just couldn't see ourselves as parents.

Several years ago a young man I was friends with asked me out to lunch to talk to me about something important that wasn't business. Naturally, if he is buying, I'm in. Turns out he was thinking of asking his girlfriend to marry him and he wanted to talk to me about it.

I was somewhat taken aback since I had never met the girl and I was just friends with him, so why talk to me about this? He said to me something that I will remember the rest of my life, or at least until dementia sets in. He said; "Of all the people I know who are married, you have the most successful relationship I have ever seen and I want to know how you knew your wife was the right one."

It surprised me since my wife and I are very private people and I didn't think anything about our marriage would be noticeable to anyone else.

I thought about if for a few minutes and I told him a successful marriage was very simple thought not necessarily easy. There were three things that I felt were critical:

1. Common life objectives

2. Keep your promises

3. Open communication

Common Life Objectives

All of these are important and they are all interconnected. When I look at many marriages that have fallen apart, I see where each person had their own goals in life and they weren't the same as their partner. You often hear that one person didn't feel fulfilled or they were going in a different direction than I was. This comes from have different objectives in life.

How do you get common objectives? Simple. You talk and decide. Every year, for 41 years, my wife and I sit down between Christmas and New Years and we look at the past year and then we look at the year ahead and decide what we are going to do this year. We write it down and we review it several times throughout the year as well. Really no different than a business plan.

We look at all aspects of our lives and decide how much money do we want to save, how much to invest, and how much to give away. We look at our possessions and decide what to change, we also look at our health and decide what we want to accomplish there as well. We look at all aspects of our lives and write down our objectives. These are not resolutions, these are year long strategies and like any strategy they will be changed as they are needed.

Keep Your Promises

I used to travel a lot for my company and one time a friend of my wife's asked her if she worries about me. My wife asked from what standpoint? Plane crashes, traffic accidents, what? No, her friend said, don't you worry about other women. My wife's first response was to laugh and say if anyone else wants him they can have him! (In jest of course.) Then she got serious and said no she does not worry because I made her a promise and she knows I don't break my promises.

Keeping your promises denotes absolute trust. My wife and I don't waste any energy worrying about the promises each of us have made to each other. We won't break those promises no matter what and we both know it.

Open Communication

Having absolute trust in another person allows you to be totally open and honest in your communication. This does not mean we don't disagree sometimes and even have an argument now and then, but it does mean we don't say things simply to hurt the other person.

My wife told one of our nieces one time that sure we may disagree sometimes but we don't fight face to face we only fight back to back. Meaning if we are going to fight we will cover each other's back and protect each other first.

I once heard her also say that there is never a time where she doesn't love but there are time when she doesn't like me very much. Once again, absolute trust and open communication.

Coming up on Valentine's Day I know what will happen because it happens every year. We will buy each other several cards that we find funny and get a couple of cards to each other from the dogs as well. As always she will buy two chocolate cover marsh mellow hearts that are getting smaller every year and we will review and keep working on the next objective.