Thank you! I have been freaking out of late about the fact that here on the other side of age 40 I am married and happy about it. Also freaking out about how I could love and laugh with my husband every day, even the days I get annoyed with him and/or have a stupid fight with him that invariably ends when someone laughs during the fight, be happy with a sex life that does not compare to the ones we had, respectively, at age 22 or so but doesn't seem lacking, and likewise the bodies, and so on.

Yes, if you love each other...everything else will take care of itself. Or come crashing down in an unmitigated disaster, but you will still love each other and get through it.

Me too. Marriage rocks. I am happy. My husband is happy. We exist, though I'm beginning to wonder if we're as rare as unicorns. Yay for happy marriages!

I also love being married. My husband is awesomely awesome. He's my best friend. We are total nerds together. We laugh at things that nobody else finds funny (usually each other's jokes). We haven't had kids (don't know if we will), but if we do I know that he'll be a good and active, engaged father who shares the caregiving load.

What I think is important about this piece (and what I think Mr. Traister may catch flak for) is the admission that marriage isn't a fairy tale where we stop having desires and whatnot. Sure, marriage is work, but if you love the person you're with, and are loved, it's the best work there is. Because if you're lucky, if you've chosen your partner well, you continuously learn about yourself and have the benefit of sharing that with your best friend, who when you've had a bad week, will sit up at 1 a.m. with you, on the couch, in underwear, eating ice cream and watching an old Humphrey Bogart flick, and laughing at each other's really and truly awful Bogart impressions.

Or maybe that's just us.

Thank God there is finally an article on here that doesn't make me furious! Bless you Aaron. You are NOT the only one. There are many, many of us despite what the latest 'trend' is reported to be. 8 years for us and I hope everyone gets to have this kind of happiness at some point in their life!! Thanks for a great read :) Susan

Thank you. I've wanted to respond to the Sandra Tsing Lohs et. al, but you've done a much better job than I could have.

The "smug married" in the last headline was referring to me, not to Mr. Traister.

20 years and 2 weeks since our first date. He still leaves me love notes in my lunch box and I get all googly-eyed when I see him across the room at a party. I told him that I'd never divorce him, he'd have to do something so vile and heinous I'd just go ahead and kill him and no jury would ever convict me because he'd so deserve it. Here in the south, we say "he needed killin'." He finds this oddly comforting. Another couple of friends are divorcing after a mere 5 years and one kid-- they "grew apart." Huh?! I can't comprehend. Marriage is growing together and making a point of it. I think some people get married with such a jaundiced view of the institution that they choose completely unsuitable partners, because they don't believe it can be any better.

It's just that most of us contentedly married types don't really have any compulsion to scream at people about it, unlike many of the "happy" single folks. Not to imply one can't be happily single (or happily in any of a variety of other combination types, for that matter) but if you feel the need to tell everyone how great it is to be X constantly, and how insane it is to be anything other than X, you're probably not all that happy being X no matter what X happens to be.

Well over a decade and still pinching each other's butts in the kids aren't looking, discussing colony collapse disorder at dinner and reading aloud to each other in the car.

Ginchy gnarly!

It's still true that the majority of marriages work.

As the years go by (we're past the 30 mark at the moment), I've come to believe that one of the most important phrases in the traditional Book of Common Prayer marriage rite is the promise to obey. We left it out of our vows, and she still disagrees with me on this, but to me the promise to obey is a stipulation that each partner has equal standing and that we will give each other the benefit of the doubt. Naturally she thinks back to how girls were once raised and how feminism called it out: obeying your husband is just another name for servitude. She gets the benefit of the doubt on that.

this pro-marriage article is welcome!

after decades, here's some of what i really appreciate:

-after a fight knowing we're still together ~ not having to decide whether to walk or wonder if the other one will

-intimacy and companionship

-a whole that seems bigger than the sum of its parts

-not having to re-invent the relationship wheel

I've been with my husband for 13 years, 10 of them married. One daughter, 3 careers, and 4 cities later, I couldn't imagine ever leaving him. Our marriage isn't work as Tsing Loh describes it. It is easy, comfortable, sexy, and happy. And I think there are more of us out there then are represented in the media.

12 or 13, maybe it's 14 years, i kinda lost track after 10. married when we were 23 and i can't for the life of me imagine a reality without her. this is both awesomely exciting as well as very scary, what the hell do i do if something happens to her?

i've also been somewhat interested in other folks inability to laugh and giggle about their relationships and sex lives. we recount stories of chasing a 2 year old naked, not the kid, us, because of a premature commencement of adult activities. laughing at starting activities on the couch and then moving to the bed because, really, what's the rush?

i totally agree, laughter is the key, most things are not that sacred