Congratulating Matt and Rose Lamb on 54 years of marriage, a reader asks Matt what his secret is for a long and happy marriage.
Matt responds:
The secret is acceptance of each other. In many cases, Rose and I check our egos at the door.
We say we “met in the womb” because our mothers were schoolmates together; they got married the same year; and they were pregnant at the same time. I was one of the attendees of Rose’s second birthday party. We have the film to prove it. We grew up together. We respect each other. We don’t agree on everything, but we accept our disagreements.
I think marriage is a give-and-take. It’s a partnership that changes. You go from complete stupidity about what the problems and goals are, what the highs and lows are going to be; to the reality of real life; then to children, who become the driving force in your life.
The reality is that the job of raising children is not a job that’s evenly divided. In the era when we were raising our children, I would go out to work every day, and Rose would take care of the kids and run the household.
How do you keep communication when for a good part of the day you’re each living in a different world? That takes figuring out. I believe the key is just working at it.
I would be long in my grave if it wasn’t for Rose. One thing she and I knew was that we also needed time to ourselves. Quite often I would come home after working all day, and I knew I had to go out all night to different wakes and events. Dinner would be on the table; and I’d say, “Why don’t we go out for dinner?” So we’d call someone to sit with our kids. They would all sit at the table with their dinner while Rose and I were out somewhere else.
Other times we’d go together out to these events we had to go to—dinners and cocktail parties—and at the last one, we wouldn’t have eaten, so after being seated at the table, we’d excuse ourselves, go to some neighborhood dive, and sit in a booth by ourselves eating hamburgers.
There are all kinds of things we would make up in order to stay connected with one another when we were both building our businesses. I always used to say, about the children, “When they can read and write and type correctly, introduce me to them, and I’ll put them to work.” That went over like a lead balloon.
Being human, we all think we’re giving more than we’re taking, so it is what it is. But Rose and I really love and respect each other and enjoy each other’s company, and I don’t think that happens by happenstance; I think it happens by design. It’s something you have to deeply care about and do.
Rose and I are lucky. As we know in many other cases, it’s the luck of the draw. I have no problem with people who can’t stay together, and I think the realization that this is hell, why should I stay in this if I have an option, is understandable, because we must remember that this is not a dress rehearsal. I think there are many people living together wondering, “What am I doing with this idiot?” They could each write that question down on a piece of paper, exchange the paper with the other, and they'd know exactly where they stood. So, as I say in my philosophical moods, “Do it and be done with it!”
Matt
P.S.—That’s why I’m not a marriage counselor.