Discovering the Wonder of Vintage Love: The Treasure of Married Life in the Later Years

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. – Tim Keller

It seems like it was just yesterday that we fell in love. We met at a summer camp. She was a competent, intelligent, sweet, and quite attractive young cook. I was an outspoken, confident, sometimes funny, and as handsome as I would ever get, counselor. It was the kind of romance that many dream of – an endless summer full of laughter, breathless excitement and infinite promise.

I proposed by a campfire on the edge of a cliff overlooking that same camp a year later. We exchanged poetic, idealistic wedding vows just before Christmas. We were lovers, but we were also best friends. Could life ever get better?

It seems hard to believe but those vivid memories are over 40 years old. We have now entered our 5^th decade of married life.

More in love?

Some older couples claim that they are more in love than ever. Can “senior” love even hold a candle to young lovers whose blood churns in a cocktail of hormones and fairytale dreams? At first glance, the answer is no!

There is something magical about the nervous excitement of young love. It is also somewhat exhausting. On that memorable night when I first held her, we watched the moon travel all the way across the sky. I still like holding her in the moonlight on a summer evening until I start snoring by 10:00. In the beginning, it was so thrilling to learn all I could about this stranger who seemed to be into me! Now, I know her better than any other human.

So, what is married life like now? Do we still have things to talk about? Have we run out of clever lines or interesting topics to explore?

Research seems to confirm there are some limits to the lifespan of young love. Those feelings of nervous excitement we call “being in love” does not last long. Well known author and marriage counselor Gary Chapman affectionately refers to this stage as “the tingles.” He claims that it lasts, at most, one to two years. So, what then?

Observing couples a few years down the road may not bring much encouragement. In fact, most marriages hit their lowest point 5-10 years after the honeymoon. At this point many people throw in the towel. But sadly, they may be missing out on the best years yet.

The wonder of “vintage love” in married life

I believe the best stage is not puppy love, first love, or honeymoon love, but “vintage love.” That’s right! For couples who stay together, long-term studies of marriage satisfaction demonstrate that the later years, thirty years and beyond, can be better than ever. Yes, they find a love that even surpasses those sleepless nights of youth!

That is the story of my wife and me. The other day I came up behind her and put my arms around her and spontaneously remarked, “You know it’s strange. I’m getting old, you’re getting old. But our love…our love isn’t getting old.”

The high value of maturing love in married life

I have never made wine, but I assume that there is something exciting about harvesting a fresh crop of grapes, squeezing out all of the juice, fermenting it, testing, and testing until it is just right and then bottling it to capture the unique flavor produced by that particular vineyard in that season. Hopefully, that new wine will be a source of celebration for all who raise their glass with it.

But they say that wine can become even better if it is given a chance to age. Recently, a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti sold for $585K. That is a bottle of wine that has aged so well that it likely won’t ever be consumed! Just as some wine gets better with age, so can married life. It can become a better type of love – better in a different way.

I like the metaphor of love as water. It is essential to life. Water refreshes, washes, and quenches our thirst. Young love is like a little stream you might come across on a hike. It winds through the forest, bubbling over the rocks and delighting us with its sound and coolness. But follow that stream for a long time and you will find that it eventually turns into a slow, but powerful river.

This river is older, wiser, and teaming with all manner of life. This is a picture of vintage love. It may not look as fresh or fun, but it is wide, strong, and deeply satisfying. Nothing can stop it now.

What is so wonderful about married life in its later seasons?

My wife and I have been reflecting lately on how rich our current married life is. We are not sure if we are “more in love” than yesteryear, but we have never felt as close or been so thankful for our relationship as now. So, for you young, “whipper-snappers” out there, here are some ways that this “later love” is the best of all.

We are deeply bonded through shared experience and memories

It is always fun to get together with an old friend and share stories of our youth. We retell embarrassing moments, use inside jokes, sing old songs. At best we may have shared a few years of life together. Now, multiply that times ten or twenty, and you may approach something a forty-plus-year marriage produces.

We have hundreds of references to songs, movies, and adorable sayings from our children when they were young. “Boppa, I love you even when you are bad” may not mean anything to most people. But to my wife and I, we can still hear echoes of our 2-year-old son encouraging his grandpa like he was still in the room.

We have profoundly shaped each other

At an anniversary dinner a few years ago, we posed this question: How have we shaped each other? That led us to a beautiful time of appreciating the influence of one another.

As individuals, we are far more balanced, wise and confident now than we used be. However, we do not believe this growth has come from extra will-power or New Year’s resolutions. Rather, much of it has been the direct result of God’s spirit and the gift of our spouse.

We have weathered the storms of life together

I like to say that my wife and I have been to hell and back many times in our married life. Perhaps there is no source of bonding quite as powerful as shared pain. We can’t count all of the tears that we have shed together. Some of it we have caused. Some of it was caused by others. Either way, we have learned to cling to each other, sometimes out of sheer desperation. And when the sun did finally come out again, we had a fellow traveler to help us live again.

I have learned that iron and carbon by themselves are not very strong elements. But when melted together in the right proportion they become the alloy steel that is 1,000 times stronger than pure iron. Then when steel is put under intense pressure, heated, and cooled multiple times, it can become stronger still.

I’m no iron-man. I know that by myself I am pretty weak. But add my wife into the mix, subject us to the intense heat and pressure that comes with 40 years of life together and we become far stronger than we ever were as newlyweds.

We are veterans in the art of loving each other

I think most spouses spend the first 5-10 years of their married life trying to get their partner to be more like them. When they finally realize that it won’t work, they can shift from trying to change the other to trying to learn from the other. At that point, real growth can begin.

I have a passion and some ability to write. My wife is far more gifted in editing. For years, I frustrated her with my lack of attention to silly little details like spelling, grammar, and punctuation. In turn, she irritated me when she kept pointing these things out.

For a long time, we barely survived the process of me writing anything for public consumption and her insistence on fixing it. Ever so slowly, though, I started to realize that she was good – quite good at taking my work and making it better. Now, I beg her to give me input. She makes me better. I no longer want her to be me.

This is just a little window into hundreds of areas where we have learned to better appreciate and love each other. Over time, we continue to hone our expertise in the other. I know it often takes 6-8 years for most people to earn a PhD. My wife spent over forty years becoming the world’s foremost authority on me. I don’t know if that is worth a PhD, but for me it is worth a lot!

Most importantly, we have learned how work through our differences in opinion and feelings in a supportive and usually, civil way. We can now have hard conversations and only lose our tempers once in a while. We still fight, but like good sparring partners, we can now fight without drawing too much blood.

God has used us as a ministry team to bless others

Christian counselor and author, Larry Crabb, taught that all of us have two basic emotional needs: Security (love) and significance (purpose). Over the years my wife and I have encouraged each other in our careers and hobbies but have also worked as a team in parenting and ministry.

For most of our married life, we led church home groups. Many of these communities have been populated by young adults. These millennials have brought us the joy of many meaningful relationships. They also brought their problems.

Before I ever considered having a mental health practice, my wife and I spent hundreds of hours doing “living room and coffee shop therapy.” We have also done premarital counseling with many young couples, some of whom have asked us to officiate their weddings.

Serving together has produced challenges as well as beauty. Our life has been anything but normal and boring. And one of the side benefits has been to deepen the bond between us even more.

Major disclaimer!

In this article, I have given a glowing report on marriage in the later years. All of what I claimed is true or rather can become true. The reality is that marriage can go either way. The future of any relationship greatly depends on the work that goes into it.

In our relationship seminar, we show a picture that we call “The Tale of Two Trees”. On the left side is a beautiful weeping birch with it’s long, green, hanging branches swaying in the summer breeze, shading the back yard and deck of a house.

On the right side is another weeping birch. This tree was planted at the same time, just across the fence. It clearly grew for a while and then like many trees of this species, got infected and died. Now, this large wooden skeleton stands as a sad reminder of neglect and decay.

We use this picture to make the point that marriages are not static. They have all the potential to grow into a beautiful display, but only if they are nurtured. Marriages work, but only to the degree that they are worked.

Ask any of the older couples who testify to high satisfaction, and they will point to the amount of work it took. Some of that work is done through trial and error; some of it through trials by fire. Much of it may have been done with the help of mentors, books, or counseling. They would also say that this effort has been worth it. The joy and emotional intimacy of growing old together far surpasses any sacrifice along the way.

Marriage is by the grace of God

Many of these couples would add one more ingredient to their success – the grace of God. My wife and I vouch for the critical role that the Lord has played in the growth of our relationship. On the day we wed, we had a high view of marriage. We were making a sacred life-long commitment. We believed that we could become one.

We had no idea, however, how hard it would be. Becoming one was not natural. There was some joy in those first few years of marriage. But there was also struggle. By year seven, my wife was depressed and quite unhappy with our relationship. We had to fight for our relationship. We had to learn how to die to our pride and selfishness. We had to get help.

Most of the help that we found was in God and his people. We did a Christian marriage class. We got counsel from pastors and friends. And we turned to prayer and God’s word. Over the years we have found wonderful biblical keys to relationships that make relationships work. Practices such as honoring, forgiving, listening, repenting, and serving have produced powerful fruit. We have taken these truths and created a relationship seminar for churches.

Forty years later, we are still not “one.” On good days we feel like we are almost there. So much closer than we have ever been. This love is good – vintage good. On our 25^th anniversary, I tried to capture my thoughts about the strange and wonderful experience of our romance at that stage. Here is what came out.

25 years of divine romance

A quarter century of loving you. 25 years of adventure.
I remember that first letter that you wrote to me that caused me to shake with the Spirit’s touch.
And our first kiss under the stars.
There have been so many since – tender, warm, passionate, loving, gentle, and full of meaning.
Every time our lips touched, so did our souls.
But our souls have touched in so many other ways.
As we drove thousands of miles, holding hands.
As we spoke enough words of affirmation to fill a book.
As we laughed together, laid silently next to each other, and yes, even argued with each other – struggling to understand and search for the path we could walk on together.
And how many times have we held each other, weeping over personal sin or the pain hurled at us from a cruel world?
And how many times did we end up on our knees, submitting to the Christ who holds the keys to life and death?
Certainly, our souls kissed every time we watched our children crawl, walk, run, and often fall. For our children, we have always been mom and dad-eternally linked, or so it seems.
Was there a time when you weren’t my friend? When you weren’t my wife?
Was there a time when we were just strangers passing?
Now we know that God’s word is true. This romance is better than we could have dreamed.
How or when it happened, I do not know, but we have become one.
You are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and there is no one closer.

For more help navigating through a difficult season in your relationships or other life issues, contact me or any of the other counselors at Spokane Christian Counseling. We also have sister offices elsewhere. We can partner with you in your quest to grow and thrive.