Sharing new experiences with someone you trust: a great perk of the long-term marriage!
Admit it: you’ve seen a golden anniversary announcement and thought, “50 years? How on earth did they make it to 50 years?” Staying married for five decades takes all kinds of qualities, but they’re not always the ones you think.
We got some insights from a wonderful, new photography book by Lauren Fleishman, The Lovers. The book features couples who have been together for more than 50 years. Fleishman was motivated to create her book after stumbling upon a box of love letters that her recently-deceased grandfather, her last surviving grandparent, wrote to her grandmother during WWII. Realizing that she really didn’t know a lot about the passionate side of her grandparents’ history together, Fleishman was prompted to seek out and record the stories from other long-married couples.
The book also probes into some real answers as to why some couples actually do enjoy each other’s company for 50 and even 60 or more years.
Six years in the making
Six years in the making The Lovers features interviews and photography of nearly 100 couples who have been married 50+ years. When Lauren would first approach a couple, it was because the seniors reminded her of her own very-much-in-love grandparents. Her finished book includes couples from all over the country, and even Europe. Plus, the couples all come from various diverse backgrounds, including same sex and interracial, and those in arranged-marriages.
Find ways to compromise
In an interview published on RebeccaMinkoff.com, Fleishman reveals, “Each couple was very different, but what I found is that love gets deeper as you go along.” In that same interview, Lauren added, ‘The couples admit that it wasn’t always a smooth road, but they found ways to compromise.”
Quotes from the book
Here are a few quotable gems from some of the featured subjects:
“As you grow older, love changes. It changes because we change.” –Frances Futterman
“In love, hot romance doesn’t last forever.” –Dorothy Bolotin
“You got to be able to bend a little bit. Because if the Lord hadn’t made a tree that was kinda wavy, it would break. So that’s love.” –Theauther Love
“In marriage, you acquire habits. You get used to living together, to having those habits. And after a certain age, people don’t want to change anymore – they have their ways.” –Lucien Einaudi
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