What I Learned In Ten Years of Marriage

Staying happily married comes down to one behavior.

In times of suffering, or joy, or even in the mundane—do I turn toward my partner, or away from them?

In the past ten years married to Robyn, this is what I’ve learned. It all comes down to a simple thing that happens dozens of times a day. Turning toward builds intimacy and nurtures love. Turning away builds resentment and undermines connection.

The key question then is this: how do I turn toward my partner, consistently?

The first “how” is uncompressed, emotionally available time.

In other words—time together that isn’t rushed.

To turn toward requires being in the same place long enough to actually confide about a struggle or savor a joy. And not just that—we have to be there. There’s no space for turning toward if we’re silently preoccupied with work or the kids or chores.

There are many obvious examples of this—going on dates, therapy, and more. But I don’t think it always requires talking.

Turning toward can happen while just being in the same room, even silently—as long as the time is uncompressed and both partners are emotionally available. Maybe that’s reading next to each other. Maybe it’s holding hands while walking the dog. Maybe it’s just sitting on the couch at the end of the day without rushing to the next thing.

The second “how” is building the mentality, the systems, and the trust to deal with conflict.

Unresolved conflict is a killer, obviously. But it’s also more nuanced than that, and there are many habits to stack beyond just “good communication.”

I think it starts with a mentality of gratitude and generosity.

You have to genuinely assume that your partner is doing more, suffering more, and trying harder beneath the surface than what you can see. You have to assume good intent even when you feel wronged. You have to train your mind—and sometimes force your heart—to find reasons to appreciate them.

That posture matters because it moderates our natural inclination toward defensiveness in moments of conflict. It’s why we start our temperature checks with gratitude.

Resolving conflict also requires self-discipline.

It’s not just Robyn’s job to bring her issues to the table. More often, it’s on me to be the type of person who creates a safe enough space—one of genuine care and understanding—so that when she is emotionally vulnerable and needs to talk about something hard, she trusts that I will love her in that moment.

I have to be healthy and stable enough to make a space sacred enough for her to share her heart and soul.

And the roles flip.

When I’m in that vulnerable place, Robyn has to do the same. When we both give more, listen more, and take on more than what we perceive to be our fair share, our marriage wins.

There are so many skills and practices that support our ability to manage conflict.

We swear by a weekly temperature check. But it’s also getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising. It’s listening well and using “I” statements. It’s having good role models—friends and family who set me straight when I’m angry or off base. It’s journaling, prayer, or other forms of discernment and expression that turn down my own anxieties.

Managing conflict comes down to having the mentality, systems, and skills to actually resolve it—and both partners giving more than 50% in that effort.

Unresolved conflict turns you away from your partner. So we have to resolve it, and we have to stack every habit we can to make that more likely.

The third “how” is having a vision for the future.

Building a life and a way of living that we both want is an incredibly strong force for turning toward each other.

Something Robyn and I talk about a lot—and even do reflection exercises on—is:

What do we want our life to be like in five years? Ten years? When we’re retired? When we’re old and gray?

How are we doing? Are we building the life we imagined? What does it feel like?

Down to the details—what do we want our life together to be, and are we actually living it?

Having a shared dream is a powerful relationship magnet. It builds energy and excitement. It also ensures that we’re both moving toward a place we actually want to go.

And that dream has real, practical consequences.

When you see it clearly, it shapes decisions—big and small—and those decisions compound.

We chose a smaller house in a diverse, friendly neighborhood, even though finding a good school has been harder and more expensive. We’ve traded more time with family for fewer cultural experiences and life in the city. We’ve gone on fewer dates out and chosen less luxury so we can hopefully retire a little earlier.

We’ve made our kids share a room so they spend more time together, and so we feel freer hosting guests. We overseed the grass so it can stand up to the backyard soccer our boys love to play.

Seeing the dream clearly shapes these big and seemingly insignificant decisions. And those decisions, over time, reinforce the dream we’re trying to build.

It becomes a virtuous cycle.

We talk about it. We get excited about it. It turns us in toward each other. We make decisions, and the dream becomes more real. And so we’re drawn in even further.

A clear, compelling dream also helps us make sense of sacrifice.

I could probably have made more money if we had moved to a coast after business school, or if I hadn’t gone into public service. Robyn could have worked full-time after we had kids instead of being in a flexible work schedule. We would almost certainly be less tired if we had a smaller family.

We could spend less time at soccer fields. We could skip church more often. We could have chosen “easier” paths in a hundred different ways.

But that’s not our dream.

We make these sacrifices, and they are more palatable—more meaningful—because we can see how they fit into the life we are trying to build.

There are moments, in the middle of the chaos, when we can look at each other and say: this is the dream.

And that acknowledgment creates a bond. It helps us appreciate what each of us is carrying—individually and together. The dream binds us and turns us toward each other.

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Turning toward each other is not trivial. Marriage is hard.

In a world of constant rushing, shifting expectations around family and gender roles, distraction, and self-promotion, it can feel like the deck is stacked against it. Even if you choose the right partner, even if you are mature enough to be married—it is still really hard.

Maybe that’s part of why so many marriages fail.

And at the same time—we all can do this.

We can have healthy, thriving marriages. We can learn to turn toward each other. We can help each other learn a better way to live and to be married people.

I’ve been blessed to learn a lot in our first ten years of marriage—through joy, and through real hardship. We’ve been shaped by mentors, and by a community that has loved and nurtured our marriage deeply.

We are lucky.

Lucky to have each other. And lucky to be surrounded by many couples who model what a loving, generous, and committed relationship looks like.

My hope in writing this is to solidify what I’ve learned so far—and, in some small way, to take the love and wisdom that so many people have poured into us and pay it forward.

How Long We’ve Been Doing This

One day, we’ll be talkin’ about how long we’ve been doing this.

It’ll be in the quiet moments, like me cooking a lazy Sunday dinner while you’re working on a jigsaw puzzle nearby.

Or in the loud ones, like cheering on the sidelines at a soccer tournament, because it’s one of ours out there.

There’ll be days we’re just listening to country radio, holding hands as we drive to the coffee shop.

One day, we’ll be talkin’ about how long we’ve been doing this.

We’ll reminisce about getting a night out with old friends at Mario’s—the cozy restaurant we went to once, and it became ours.

And I’ll think of how you always bring the Fage Greek yogurt recipe we love for biscuits and gravy to brunch, in that cast iron pan that’s turned into “that old cast iron pan.”

There’ll be the quiet, spontaneous moments too, like you wrapping me in a hug while I’m sitting at the table writing a blog post (just like you did today).

Some things will stay the same, like family dinner at a crowded table with bumpy cake for a birthday—or pineapple, if it’s June.

There’ll be walks with the dog who still insists on taking us out at lunchtime.

And, of course, our family meetings that always seem to end with a cleaner house—or our temperature checks that always end with a kiss goodnight.

I know the years ahead will bring big changes—retirement, new adventures, and more gray hair than we have today.

But I hope that through it all, some things stay just as they are now. I hope, God willing, we’ll still be talking about how long we’ve been doing this, and how long we’ve been building this life together—one little tradition at a time.

Becoming giving beings

Children are selfish. By design. That’s what they’re supposed to do and their survival depends on it. From the moment they are born, they demand that we feed them, clothe them, protect them, love them, and bathe them.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @adroman

And so did I. Like every other person that has ever lived, I was a selfish child. Far into adolescence, I was selfish, even if it was slightly less so than the day I was born.

As we age, it seems as if life extracts the selfishness, little by little, from our bodies and minds. First through marriage, then through children. For those of us who believe, through faith also. Through the intensities of grief and joy the selfishness is stolen sneakily, by the experience of life itself - if we let it.

If I am lucky enough to live a full life, without sudden death, I don’t know, exactly, what it will be like to die. I know it’s coming someday, but say I am dying at 95 from the ailment of a having a body that has long since depreciated past its useful life - what will it be like? I meditate on what it might be so that I can be prepared.

If I am so lucky to not die a sudden death, I think it may actually be like the movies. That’s what I hope for, anyway.

When I meditate on what I will be thinking and feeling on my deathbed, I imagine being close to Robyn and our children. I think I will want to just sit with them, drinking water and eating rice with lentils. Simple food, that does not distract from the company.

As I visualize myself slowly chewing the tasteless rice, my deathbed meditation progress to its very last moments.

I am there. Robyn is there. Our sons are there, and even in my foggy mental state, and despite the excruciating pain of inhabiting a dying body, I can tell our sons are grown because the hair on their temples has started to grey - that is the mark of a grown man in our line.

And then, at the very end, I gaze at Robyn. I am there, trying to muster some last words before I go ahead. In that last moment I do not ask for more painkillers. I do not cry. I do not beg God for more time. I do not say to her, “tell me you love me.” In those last moments, I am determined not to take.

With the last breaths of oxygen I breathe, and the last beats of my heart, before my thoughts go dark, I will try to say, “I love you.”

I will try to give love, to her, until the literal end of my life. Until God takes me from her embrace. In that moment, when I am as vulnerable as the day I was born, I dream of giving whatever love remains. Just like that. Just like the movies.

In life, and death, there can be so much suffering. That’s part of the deal. But what a beautiful thing to be part of. It is wonderful to know that if we must suffer the fate of death that there’s at least a fighting chance that life will have transformed us from something selfish into something more gracious.

It is utterly remarkable to me that we can go from being newborns, designed to be selfish, into giving beings. What a beautiful and curious thing it is, that after the immense suffering of our lives, at the moment of imminent death, our singular focus, above even our own survival, can become, “I love you.”

Being that, a giving being, is what I hope to become.

“Friends of friends are all friends”

“Friends of friends are all friends”

This is one of the enduring bits of wisdom my friend Wyman has taught me. And sure enough, at the friends’ night the evening before his wedding, we were, indeed, all friends.

This has been the case at the weddings and bachelor parties I’ve been to over the years. I get along swimmingly, without fail, with the friends of my closest friends. And the most fun I’ve had at weddings are usually preluded by an energizing, seemingly providential, friends night. This has been a pattern, not a coincidence.

I think the underlying cause of this is stories, and how we want to be part of stories that matter.

Weddings are great examples of stories that matter. Robyn and I still talk often about stories from our own wedding.

Like the bobbing poster sized cutouts of our heads that our friends Nick and Liz found and the heat it brought to an already sizzling dance floor. We remember the quick stop we had at Atwater brewery for post-ceremony photos, that our entire family showed up at, and the pints of Whango we had to chug on our way to our wedding reception. And I’ve learned to laugh about how my very best friends let me get locked in the church after our wedding rehearsal.

But just as often, we reminisce over the stories of other weddings we’ve attended, where we were just part of the supporting cast, rather than the protagonists.

We remember how we scurried across Northern California to attend a Bay Area and Tahoe wedding in the same weekend. We remember the picnic in a Greenville park and how we climbed a literal mountain for the marriage of Robyn’s closest childhood friend. We relive trips to places like Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Milwaukee and the adventures we’ve had with old friends we reconnected with at destinations across the country.

Weddings are more than just significant, however. They are also collective stories, where the narrative is made from the interwoven threads of an ensemble cast, rather than a single strand dominated by the actions of one person. The bride and groom may be the protagonists, but for a wedding the rest of the ensemble and the setting is just as important. That everyone can be part of the story is exactly the point.

All the best stories, I think, are collective, ensemble tales. The story of a wedding. The novel East of Eden. The story of my family. The story of America. The stories of scripture. The story of a championship athletic teams. The stories of social movements to expand rights and freedoms all across the world. The story of Marvel’s Avengers. The story of great American cities like Detroit, New York, and Chicago. The story of a marriage. The story of our marriage.

These stories are all made up of interwoven threads and an ensemble cast, and that’s what make them transcendent. Collective stories have archetypes and themes that everyone understands, and that’s what makes them powerful and magnetic.

I think the deep yearning to become part of a meaningful, transcendent, collective story is why friends of friends become friends at weddings. The yearning opens our hearts and minds to new experiences and brings out the truest and purest versions of ourselves.

But more broadly than that, collective stories also explain why we see people making seemingly irrational and painful sacrifices for something larger than themselves. The desire to be part of a collective story drives people to do everything from serve their country, commit to a faith, travel thousands of miles to be home for the holidays, or take on a cause that others think is lost.

Being part of a collective story is a very special type of human experience that brings a deep, grounded, and peace-giving joy. Giving someone the chance to be a part of a story like that is one of the greatest gifts that can be given.

“Papa? Will you never die?”

“Papa? If you take good care of your body, will you never die?”

This was the last tension, that once revealed, unwound the bedtime tantrums a few nights ago. As it turns out, it wasn’t the imminent end of our annual extended family vacation in northern Michigan that had Bo’s feelings and stomach in knots.

It was death.

Unasked and unanswered questions about death. Doubts about death. Anxiety about death, so insidious that I have not a single clue how the questions were seeded in his mind and why they sprouted so soon.

“I want to be with you for a hundred million infinity years, Papa. A hundred million INFINITY.”

Such earnest, piercing, and deeply empathetic honesty is the fingerprint of our eldest son’s soul.

When he tells me this, my excuses all evaporate. How could I ever not eat right from this day forward? How could I ever get to drunkenness ever again? How can I not be disciplined about, exercise, sleep, and going to the doctor? How could I ever contemplate texting and driving, ever again? How could I let myself stress about something as artificial as a career? For Bo, for Robyn, and our two younger sons, how could I do anything else?

I needed to hear this, this week, because I have been losing focus on what really matters.

I have been moping about how I feel like many of my dreams are fading. My need to return to public service. My need to challenge the power structures that tax my talent everyday at work. The book I need to finish, or the businesses I need to start. Ego stuff.

In my head, at his bedside, my better angels turned the tide in the ongoing battle with my ambition. Those are not needs. Those are wants. To believe they are needs is a delusion. Dreams are important, yes, but they are wants, not needs.

All I really need, desperately, is to be here. To show up. To wake up with sound-enough mind and body. To not lose anyone before the next sunset. To have who and what I am intertwined with to stay intertwined. This is what I need.

What I vowed to Bo is that I would take care of my body, because I wanted to be here for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

“I will be here for as long as I can. I want to be here, with you and our family, for as long as I can.”

And as he drifted to sleep, I stayed a moment, kneeling, and thought - loudly enough, only, perhaps, for his soul to overhear,

“Please, God, help us all be here for as long as we can.”

When we are finally comfortable is when we need to dream bigger

We are in the waning days of Robyn’s third pregnancy. Our third son is so close to being here. As I write this on a Sunday, he’s due to meet us tomorrow. 

Strangely, I’ve awaited his arrival more anxiously than our previous two children, which I feel guilty about.

Looking back on when Robert was born, I suppose I was in a state of shock. I was grieving my father, still. And in addition to my struggle to grasp what it would mean to be a newly minted father, I was also working a demanding job with high stakes and high stress. And so when Robert came along, even though I wanted to devote myself fully to my new responsibilities, I was incapable of it. My head was two jumbled up.

And with Myles two years later, his arrival snuck up on me. I was 3 months into a new job and it was the middle of the Christmas season. We were planning my brother in law’s bachelor party. We already had one toddler who had just turned two. I was exhausted, physically, and mentally before Myles even arrived. I probably would’ve anticipated his arrival more, had my mental energy not been so depleted.

But this time it’s different. I have greater stability at work and have been sleeping, eating, and exercising like a responsible person instead of a young man holding onto his bachelor days. And the deep introspection brought on by the past two years of Covid-related anxiety, determination, and solitude have left me feeling an unexpected clarity about my life’s purpose.

What I feel guilty about is that I’ve had feelings of anxiety and longing for our third son’s arrival, an emotion I didn’t afford to Bo and Myles. For the first time, I feel that ache, desperate for or son to arrive. Why do I feel it this time, for the first time?

A few months ago, I wondered whether I had any dreams left. Life has been so good, even amidst the crisis of Covid-19. I met and married Robyn. We have a family. We have a home. We live comfortably and without fear of missing a meal. We are stable and healthy. We get to see our extended family, and learn through travel. Granted I don’t have expensive or far-reaching desires, but everything I’ve ever really wanted, I now have. Everything else good in my life was a bonus to be grateful for, I thought.

And yet, I’m not in a place of patience waiting for his due date. On the contrary, our third son has got my heart all flustered fluttering. He’s got me feeling unsatisfied again, which I thought I had gotten over. I thought I had gotten closer to the ever elusive mindset of joyful non attachment.

But it turns out, that’s absolutely false. I’m attached. I want him to get here. He needs to be here. Our family needs him to be complete. I have been awaiting him impatiently, asking Robyn about her contractions with sincere but anxious curiosity after every deep breath she takes.

Just 6 months ago, I was ready to call it and say that I didn’t really have any dreams left. But our unborn, unnamed, little boy has reminded me how dangerous it is to feel finished and past the phase in our life where we dream. He’s reminded me that we’re never done dreaming, nor should we ever be.

Because even if I am comfortable and happy, that’s not the same as being “done”. The big world around me, or even my little world under our roof is complete. There is more work to do. There is so much left to finish. We have so much left to dream.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a jarring reminder of that this week.

I was just starting to think that everything was settling into place in the big world around us. With the waning of the Omicron variant, Covid-19 seemed to be in its last overture. Joblessness was starting to fall, wages and inflation starting to rise. Robyn and I have been growing steadily in our careers. Our children are healthy and growing into fine young men. The worst of winter, literally and figuratively, seemed to be over.

I thought that I could lay off the accelerator and coast a little, after the difficult season I thought we were coming out of. Things were going well. My garden was planted and the world was chilling the efff out, I thought, and now all I had to do was tend to my garden. I had 80% or more of my life’s dreams - I could focus on the remaining proportion leisurely. I could let it ride with the dreams I’ve already made real.

And then, Robyn’s due date crept closer. And I realized, the picture in our little world isn’t complete. There is more to plant in our garden. I want our son to get here, I thought. We have more dreams to realize. We’re not done yet, we have work to do in our own backyard. 

And with Russia invading Ukraine, it was a slap in the face reminding me there was a world outside our backyard that needed more and bigger dreams. 

And yes, not all of us need to flock to the realm of foreign politics. There is more dreaming and work to do in so many domains. In our neighborhood. For advancing literacy. For improving health. For creating art and music. For decarbonization. For restoring trust to our institutions. For ending gun violence. And yes, sadly, for preventing world wars.

This aching anxiety for our third son - just when I thought I could slow down on dreaming - has taught me something important. Even when we think we’ve achieved our dreams, there is so much left to dream for. When things are good and we are comfortable, is precisely when our world - whether our little world or the big world around us - needs us to keep dreaming the most.

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