Tenacity

It occurs to me that one key ingredient for a successful marriage is sheer stubbornness. Not the kind of stubbornness where one or both insist always on their own way. But a stubborn commitment to making it work -- and even (perhaps) proving all the nay-sayers wrong. How else to explain some of the long-lived marriages among friends and acquaintances where the "conventional wisdom" counseled against them tying the knot in the first place?

These include marriages of young folk:

* age 18, married for 20 years (no college degree)

* age 20/21, married for 14 years (one college graduate, one in college)

* age 21/25, married for 14 years (one college graduate, one grad student)

* age 23/36, married for 10 years (no college degree)

And I know of at least 5 marriages in which the wife is 8 to 12 years older than her husband.* (To be fair, the most recent of these marriages is in its third year -- it has not yet stood the test of time.)

That's not to say that "most" such marriages will succeed -- but at least among these folks, who happen to be from white, middle-class families who in some cases initially worried about the match, they seem to be beating the odds.

FN* None of these couples involve a woman who could be classified as a "cougar" in the current sense, and I believe there was no significant wealth discrepancy between the partners in any of these matches.