Book is good news about marriage in later years

Book is good news about marriage in later years article by Peter King pwking@aol.com
March 14, 2009
Love means never having to say you've grown tired of each other

Your marriage may not be a fairy tale, but chances are you are living happily ever after.

That is the conclusion of journalist and author Maggie Scarf, who interviewed 75 couples between the ages of 50 and 75 for her new book, "September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years" (Riverhead Books, $24.95).

"I expected people to be having terrible complaints about their kids and their situations, and being crotchety, and I found people who were engaged and alert and enjoying life," Scarf said.

It's not as if the marriages have always been perfectly blissful. Most of the couples have weathered icy patches. "Every marriage has a downside, a time when you looked across the room and thought, 'Oh, my God, what is it with this person?'" Scarf said.

This is a normal progression in the U-shaped trajectory many marriages take, according to Scarf. "You get married, you're at the high point of that U curve." But soon, the demands of raising kids and building a successful life add stress and the couple heads to the bottom of the U curve.

This is often when marriages begin to fail or at least become tattered. But if a couple works through the problems, there are better times ahead as the kids begin to leave the nest. "The couple starts to have more time together, they start to refind each other, to have more of sense of intimacy and fun together, and so you get back to that initial high point," said Scarf, who has been married for 55 years. It is during this time the couple enjoys what Scarf calls the bonus years - the gift of a longer and healthier life due to the increase in life expectancy.

Couples still had arguments, but they were fairer and shorter. "They were arguing about the same things, but there wasn't that sense of rage, there wasn't a sense of tension," she said.

Scarf asked each couple about their sex life, and the spectrum swung between those who were as active as they were early in their marriage to those who were no longer having sex. Even those with less active sex lives maintained an emotional and physical closeness.

Overall, the secret of a long marriage seems to be that the couples realized that staying together would make them happier and healthier than being apart.

"What keeps a marriage together is a very mysterious kind of a glue," Scarf said.