| October
2, 2008
Can Long-Term Marriages Be Happy?
Interview
with Maggie Scarf, author of
September Songs
| Mike
Carruthers:
Can people truly be content after years or decades
of marriage? It's a question we've probably all wondered about at some point.
Now someone's actually looked into this. And what did she find with these long-married
couples?
Maggie
Scarf:
They're happy - they're just happy! The marriages are so
much more serene; they're affectionate; they've weathered the storm. Maggie
Scarf, author of the book September
Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years, interviewed couples
between the ages of fifty and seventy and she says… People
are taking time seriously. They're aware of the ticking clock: that the years
they have left to live are less than the years that they have lived. So time is
a precious commodity and people want to squeeze the juice out of their lives. Although
they're out there, amazingly Maggie did not come across any couples in that age
range of fifty to seventy who were miserable - even if they had been unhappy earlier
in their marriage. And
you know when I asked them if this were a movie or a book of this time of your
life, what would the title be? And I heard things like: tranquility, peace, set
free - it's so antithetical to everything that we think of in our youth-intoxicated
society - "oh being young is the best time of life".
At
somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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