The Heart of Everything

Lydia Netzer: 15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years
#14 Loyalty
"All the crap you read in magazines about honesty, sense of humor, communication, sensitivity, date nights, couples weekends, blah blah blah can be trumped by one word: loyalty.

You and your spouse are a team of two.

It is you against the world. No one else is allowed on the team, and no one else will ever understand the team’s rules. This is okay.

The team is not adversarial, the team does not tear its members down, the team does not sabotage the team’s success.

Teammates work constantly to help and better their teammates.

Loyalty means you put the other person in your marriage first all the time, and you let them put you first.

Loyalty means subverting your whims or desires of the moment to better meet your spouse’s whims or desires, with the full understanding and expectation that they will be doing the same.

This is the heart of everything, and it is a tricky balance.

Sometimes it sways one way and some the other. Sometimes he gets to be crazy, sometimes it’s your turn. Sometimes she’s in the spotlight, sometimes you.

Ups and downs, ultimately, don’t matter because the team endures."