I really like what my friend James from “Finding Optimism” wrote on the message board of my post, “Marriage Is a Discipline,” regarding how to effectively keep his spouse around:

My wife and I have been married for 13 years. The foundation of our marriage has always been a commitment to the promises we made to each other, before God, on our wedding day. For us they are lasting promises while we’re both alive.
We’ve also been through a lot since being married (though perhaps not like Lynn & Cully). I’m nothing like the person she thought she had married, and illness has caused many problems for us. But the commitment we made makes our marriage successful and helps us to get through the really difficult times. It’s sounds dry, but we are very happily married most of the time.
This is nothing like what the media portrays. I wonder how much the divorce rate, of 40-50 percent, reflects this media influence. The romance and infatuation dies in most marriages, and it comes back to hard work, commitment, discipline, and the other things written by you (Therese) in the post above. Thanks for the reminder.