Thursday 14th February 2008

Heather Bellamy spoke with three couples

On Valentine's Day it's a great opportunity to celebrate marriage! With divorce rates dropping in the UK - now at their lowest level since 1984, Heather Bellamy decided to catch up with three couples who have over 100 years of marriage between them! If you've had no card, flowers or chocolates and you're feeling cynical, grab a cuppa and let Tom & Suzie, Ian & Karen and Peter & Barbara restore your faith in the opposite sex.

Tom & Suzie

Heather: After 30 years of marriage, you're a couple who seem like they really enjoy being with each other. What advice would you have for young people who view marriage with cynicism?

Tom & Suzie: There are a lot of reasons why people view marriage with cynicism, first they see that many marriages don't make it, second there are a lot of people who are not happy with their marriage. We have not always had a good time being together but over the years (this will be our 33rd) we have found "shared experience breeds intimacy" this is the key to our happiness. We find that we enjoy being with each other more than anyone else. We have become best friends and really enjoy doing things and experiencing things together. So our advice is find your best friend in each other do all that you can do to discover life together, don't let things or people get between you. Hang on to the one your heart loves (Song of Songs 3)!

Heather: What have you both enjoyed most about marriage in those years?

Tom & Suzie: Sex........true but really it's becoming a family. We started off just the two of us, but now with the birth of our fourth grandchild we are ten. It's a pretty amazing thing to see life progress and see Gods blessing on all of our lives.

Heather: With it being Valentines Day, how important do you think romance is to marriage, do you think God is romantic?

Tom & Suzie: Romance is always important. Not just on the big V day but everyday. I think you have to consider each other everyday, and pursue each other everyday. There is a joy in seeing the one you love smile. God is the ultimate romantic!

Ian & Karen

Heather: You guys have 6 children!! Many marriages can come under stress through issues with their kids. What would be the top things you've learned together relating to your marriage and children?

Ian: Wow, that's a tough question, there's so much that it's almost impossible to answer. All the usual stuff about unconditional love, all that and more. For me, one of the most liberating things I've learned in that area is to not stress out too much over trying to hide our arguments from the kids. You know, that whole 'not in front of the children' thing. I think that's well intentioned, but it can really add to the problem (whispering the arguments is crazy, and how on earth do you delay things til later?) I'm not advocating gratuitous and unrestrained 'let it all hang out' thinking here, but we've found that our children have benefited from seeing that arguments happen, (they'll have their own fair share one day) and, here's the best part, they can be resolved and worked through genuinely and honestly to a place of reconciliation and, often, an improvement in family life. They see that in a Christian marriage, there is a way through.

Karen: That it is completely truthful for both of you to believe absolutely that you are more tired than the other so it is pointless to look for sympathy from another exhausted parent so better to go to God direct and pray for the energy you need to keep going.

Both: One thing we agree on is that the longer we've been with God, and the more we allow Him to heal and mature us, the easier it gets to parent and the easier it is on the kids being parented by you.

Heather: What do you both see as the foundation of marriage?

Ian: That there is no plan B, for us there is no way out of marriage. We appreciate that there are folk who have been divorced, and that is a whole area of pain and a journey they have taken with God that we really do not know about. So we're not speaking into those situations. But for us, when we have reached those incredibly painful, impossibly hard seasons, we've needed that commitment to help us to keep looking for God to bring us through together.