Thirty Years

January 9, 1993

On January 9, 1993, at 20 years old, I said “I do,” to the man I had been in love for six years. He was 23. We were young, naïve, inexperienced, and a bit crazy, but we knew our hearts. We wanted to embark on our married life together.

Thirty years have passed in the blink of an eye. Thirty years that produced three wonderful children. There were endless diaper changes, countless tears, temper tantrums, health scares, life-altering decisions, and love.

Always love.

During these thirty years I’ve acquired wisdom. Although far from “perfect”, we are still happily married. We have faced proverbial Giants, Dragons, and Pandemics and we are still together.

We’ve had doubts, droughts, floods, disappointments, setbacks, and famine, yet we always loved one another.

Always.

Raising children has been richly rewarding and God’s greatest blessing on us. Yet, children are depleting to a romantic relationship. We had to learn to navigate Parenthood without sacrificing Couplehood.

Our three children
December 24, 2022

We chose love.

Always.

We don’t always agree and at times have grown apart. Then, because we love – and like – one another, we find our way back. We choose to stay in love – and together.

Always.

I offer some wisdom to share. Take what works for you.

We are Human.

We are fallible, but we choose love.

Always.

Thirty Years of Married Wisdom

1.       Put the Couple first, above children, above self. The Couple is sacred.

2.       Be an individual. To bring the best to the couple you must live your life. Experience, explore, create, interact. Every day you will have something new to share with your spouse.

3.       Find time for intimacy throughout the days, weeks, months, and years. Intimacy is not solely sex. It’s emotional, it’s physical. It’s trust, comfort, and relaxation with your spouse. Without intimacy, sex is not fulfilling to the Couple.

4.       Make time for sex. Intimate sex. Passionate sex. Quick sex. There should always be time for sex.

5.       Learn that it’s okay to not have sex when you are in pain, exhausted, sick, or not mentally into it. But when these excuses are constant, seek help professionally.

6.       Go to the doctor regularly to stay healthy. Dentist and eye doctors, too. Stay in peak physical condition.

7.       Exercise regularly. Take care of your body and heart and they will take care of you.

8.       Seek professional therapy – marriage and individual if necessary. Learn to communicate better, love yourself more, and strengthen your marriage. Win-Win.

9.       Speak about your spouse in glowing terms around everyone you speak. Never demean your spouse in public. Never air your “dirty laundry”.

10.   Let your spouse overhear you praise him/her. Often.

11.   Talk about problems with your spouse before they fester.

12.   Decide who oversees paying the bills. Both partners should be aware of the home budget and financial goals and live accordingly.

13.   Chores should be fairly distributed. Only you and your spouse can determine what is “fair”.

14.   Hold hands.

15.   Sit together.

16.   Have Date Nights. Or Date Days. Or Date Mornings. They needn’t cost money, it’s about spending time together and making one another the priority.

17.   Learn to compromise. In a Couple, one person isn’t always going to get their way. It’s not 50/50 that makes a couple survive, it’s 100/100.

18.   Learn to have a sense of humor about Life. Life is stressful and dark at times, but laughter can brighten dark times.

19.   Honor your Couple milestones. Wedding anniversaries should be observed with reverence and celebration. EVERY YEAR.

20.   Do things apart. If one of you enjoys something the other does not, spend time apart so the individuals in the Couple can enjoy their recreational time.

21.   Do things together. Find a few things to do together that bring you both joy and enhance the Couple.

22.   Be kind to your spouse’s parents/family. If you love your spouse, it makes sense to love – or like – his/her family. There are always extreme exceptions, but overall, it doesn’t hurt to be kind, friendly, and loving.

23.   Fighting is part of marriage. When you stop communicating, it’s over. But fighting should have a time when you each listen to one another and figure out what’s going on, and there should be a resolution.

24.   Sing together. There should be at least a few songs you both enjoy. Belt them out in the car, in the shower, or whenever it makes you happy.

25.   Be patient. We all learn Life’s lessons at different paces. Allow your spouse time to navigate Life.

26.   Compliment one another.

27.   Complement one another.

28.   Bring one another coffee, tea, water, seltzer… Small acts of kindness are vitally important.

29.   Reminisce about how your fell in love, your wedding, and other early romantic milestones often. These keep the Couple aware of their powerful connection. Continue to make new romantic milestones that keep the marriage enduring.

30.   Kiss, always.

 

There are so many other nuggets of wisdom, but these made my top list.

As our 30^th Anniversary is upon us, I am most thankful our marriage has endured.

I’m thankful for all the help we’ve gotten to get to this point. Help from our parents and families, from our children and our friends. We also have had tremendous help from two therapists, two 12-Step Programs, and a stubborn belief that we belong together.

We are better together.

We love each other.

Always.

December 24, 2022

How Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Saved Me By: Candice Smith

 

Recently I took the six hours needed to watch Ethan Hawke’s documentary called The Last Movie Stars (HBO Max) and was blown away.

If you don’t know who Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were and are, then research needs to occur before reading this piece any further. For the rest of us, these two were a part of the fabric of my American upbringing. I knew their movies, I knew their love story, I knew their politics, his racing, her theater, and their philanthropy. I thought.

Watching this comprehensive documentary with their words, their children, and their images completely transformed how I looked at them as individuals, as a couple, and, more importantly to me, how I looked at myself.

Like many in the world, my first world, I suffer. I suffer with self-esteem issues. I suffer from mental issues. I suffer from the post-COVID world. I suffer from having teenagers. I suffer from anything and everything and nothing at all.

Watching Newman and Woodward on my television for six hours brought a profound understanding, a clarity that I had heretofore never experienced in my life. Ever.

They were enraptured with one another when they met. Their passion ebbed and flowed but never disappeared.

They were equally impressed with one another’s talent, perhaps more he than her.

She sacrificed to raise a family, his and theirs. She did it brilliantly if not perfectly, but it wasn’t the path she would choose again perhaps.

He was an alcoholic. She stayed despite the pain, uncertainty, and boorishness it brought.

He took up racing at 47 years of age. She rooted him on race after race.

They were a couple, a team, a family.

And, yet they were pulled together and apart like any marriage.

They continued to reinvent themselves.

They continued to make mistakes. The same mistakes.

They loved, hard.

They shared tragedy.

They shared joy.

They shared recipes with America and made millions for charity when no one else was doing this. Is ANYONE doing it even now besides them?

And while watching and learning and gleaning and sitting transfixed, I couldn’t help feeling good about myself.

Good about my marriage.

Good about my future.

You see, I’m nothing like them, and I’m everything like them.

My marriage is happy and joyful and flawed and terrible.

My desire to reinvent myself shows promise and then winds back onto itself to normalcy.

Creatures of habit.

My world has been dark of late. Problems that will remain unnamed yet are real and heavy and robbers of joy.

They affect my marriage, my family life, my serenity.

But, by seeing that Newman and Woodward had problems, too, I see a different perspective. That they suffered and endured. They reveled in one another and persevered, I am able to feel an optimism that has escaped me for far too long.

Perhaps I’d held myself, my husband, our marriage, and our family to far too high a standard.

We’re doing pretty great, thanks.

Oh, we still have problems, we’ll still fight, and we’ll be grumpy, scared, and over it, but we’ll never quit.

See, we love each other.

We’re imperfectly perfect for one another.

We love our children, our home, our lives, and each other.

And, if two crazy movie stars can muddle their way through life and keep a marriage together for 50 years, there’s no telling what two regular people like my husband and I can do – we’re nearly through the first thirty years!

So, thank you Ethan Hawke for saying yes to the project and putting a human light on two of Hollywood’s biggest deities.

Thank you, Newman children, for opening up about your parents, their story through your eyes, and for letting us know how much you loved your flawed parents.

And, thank you Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, for doing your thing for all of those decades. Right or wrong, good or bad, love or hate, drunk or sober, knowledgeable or ignorant, you provided one type of roadmap for this lady to consult when she’s feeling lost.

Lost I felt – and will feel again, no doubt – but this documentary about your lives makes me feel that whatever Life throws my way, I can navigate it with my husband by my side.

Thanks.

 

 

The Marriage Story By: Candice Smith

While recovering from a New Year’s illness last week, I had a block of time to watch something on Netflix. With no children around to curb what I’d watch, I chose a drama that seemed riveting to me. A Marriage Story was the name and it stars Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda among others. I felt I couldn’t go wrong. I knew the premise of the movie – a couple was in the process of a divorce – but felt certain there would be a happier ending as the title is A Marriage Story.

I was wrong.

Spoiler Alert, but you probably don’t need one like I did. The couple DO divorce. I was incensed.

Why?

Because I’m absolutely tired, fed up, and over movies where the couple disintegrates. Where love is lost – obliterated even – and dies. Where the couple most move on from one another to find happiness.

WHAT?!

Listen, I’m NOT a Pollyanna, but I’m a sucker for a Happy Ending.

In the decade or two (three?), I cannot think of many or ANY movies where a couple falls in love, struggles, and then STAYS TOGETHER better for the journey.

Ryan and Candice Smith
Wedding
January 9, 1993

Let me offer a personal backstory:  my husband and I are celebrating our 27^th wedding anniversary on January 9^th. It’s a big number for any couple, but especially since I am 47 and he 50. In fact, we’ve actually been together since I was 14 and he 17. So, Happy Endings mean a lot to him and me.

Realizing that many marriages end in divorce is a fact I’ve lived with my entire life. My husband and I have had great marriage models in our parents and grandparents – all married for over fifty years. But my brothers are both divorced, friends from all parts of our lives are divorced. It’s an epidemic.

Whereas I understand Art has a duty to show divorce for those going through it to understand they are not alone, where is that for couples who want to sustain?

Disney has even done away with “classic” fairy tale endings. Apparently having our daughters believe being a Princess is fine, but in no way should she ever love or have faith in a Prince.

Great, what message does that send our sons?

I am a mother of two sons and one daughter. I have a vested interest in raising both sexes to the light. To show them a world that allows them to be the best they can be, AND to learn to love unabashedly so when they choose a mate, they can defy the odds and collect years upon years of wedding anniversaries like their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

But what if their future-spouses aren’t raised that way? Then what?

Perhaps an over-simplification, but I think today’s youth – Hell, today’s Society – NEEDS romantic movies, books, and media where the couple STICKS TOGETHER. Where the relationship is held in high esteem, is WORTH WORKING ON, and is a source of COMFORT, not a death knell to happiness.

Marriage is worth the time, the commitment, and the work. Yes, work. It is HARD WORK to make a marriage last. It’s NOT easy. But it can be so worthwhile.

Should every marriage last? No, not in my opinion. Surprised? Don’t be. I know some marriages are toxic, unhealthy to both. Sometimes addiction, abuse, and culture are insurmountable. I believe those people need to be let go of their vows and find health and happiness apart.

But, for most of us, if marriage is entered, it should be the priority for a lifetime. With children, it is a necessity.

My cousin married her love yesterday. She was a beautiful bride and he a handsome groom. They are educated, are gainfully employed, and seem to be blissfully in love. The bride’s parents have been happily married for over thirty years.

But I worry. Is she equipped with the tools to stick with the marriage when it doesn’t seem fun? When romance wains, financial crisis hits, or children invade the status quo, will they dig in and work hard, or secure lawyers to get out? Does he have a marriage model or are his folks apart?

I am an optimistic person who, frankly, loves love, but this movie A Marriage Story truly rattled me. I wish the beautiful couple well and pray they make it.

As for my husband and me, our lives are NOT perfect. Far from it. We fight, we argue, we face uncertainties, we are living a fast-paced life. We bring insecurities to the table daily, and we continue to evolve. The marriage has taken a beating in the nearly three decades since we said our vows. But it still has a strong heartbeat. There is love, passion, and compassion.

A few days ago I worried about what to gift my husband for our 27^th Anniversary. Money is tight. He likes experiences more than things in this stage in his life. I’m not so creative that way.

What I’m giving him is this, my staunch defense of Marriage. The knowledge that no matter how badly he screws up, I love him and will stand by him. And, conversely, that no matter how badly I screw up, I hope he will continue to love me as fervently as he has for these last 33 years.

I love my husband and cannot imagine a world without him. This is our Marriage Story. It stars Ryan and Candice Smith, not Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. It ends with a marriage intact, not another couple divorced.

We may not be headliners, superstars, or in the majority, but we’ll stay married against the odds.

Happy Anniversary, Honey. I love you always and forever. I hope you liked the experience so far.