Best advice I ever heard on getting ahead in life: Choose your parents wisely. My advice on marriage is similar: Be stupidly lucky in choosing a life partner

Best advice I ever heard on getting ahead in life: Choose your parents wisely. My advice on marriage is similar: Be stupidly lucky in choosing a life partner. It worked for me! Last summer we celebrated our 35th anniversary. Looking forward to the next 35. (You laugh! My uncle and aunt celebrated their 70th.) Less flippantly: My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. This was the defining trauma for much of my young life. I vowed never to do that, never to inflict that on children I might eventually have. When I married, it was simply, absolutely for good. I would die rather than violate that oath. My family urged me to do the standard thing they all did, of setting up a pre-nuptial agreement and having the prospective spouse sign it. I never considered that for a minute. I was not going to place that sort of fault line in our understanding of our marriage at the beginning. We are active Catholics (she from birth, me as an adult convert). We laugh a lot, and enjoy each others' jokes, off-hand witticisms, and spontaneous turns of phrase. I think it is fair to say that we each find the other to be extremely interesting intellectually. We tell each other we love each other frequently. We leave the kids behind and go on a cruise together once per year. My wife rather unsentimentally states that love is not a feeling, it is a decision. I think it is worth it to consciously reflect on what will communicate love to your partner in ways that they understand and find meaningful. Then, do it. The doing can be more important than whatever transitory feelings might or might lie behind it. Relatively early in our marriage, I made a career choice that was an unambiguous case of putting my career ahead of my marriage and family. The consequences of that choice resonated for years in our marriage. That was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I am grateful that our family managed to survive it. I will never do something that selfish, thoughtless, and stupid again. Things can get difficult, ugly, and painful for a time. Expanding on the point above about dying rather than walking away: That probably relates metaphorically to the NYTimes article shared by the OP. In my experience, as you and your partner grow and change over a lifetime, you have to let go of, and in effect die to the relationship you had. Over and over. There is a cycle of death, relinquishment, and renewal that is inevitable in a lifelong relationship. Would you really want to spend time as a 60-year-old with a person whose best years were their high school years, and who doggedly clings to that identity for the rest of their adult life? Of course not. You become co-authors of an amazing, surprising, unfolding story. Your and your partner's identity co-evolve. To support and encourage another person's growth inevitably involves letting go of who they used to be. (BTW, please do not take anything I said above as condoning abusiveness in a relationship. There are of course horrible and untenable relationships that simply must be ended.)