Filing divorce papers can shake your faith in ever discovering (and keeping) true love and happiness. But a number of individuals recover every day and go on to find a person, who makes them happy. It’s important that you don’t give up on yourself or the power of true love and commitment. These people didn’t:
Tim Grahl
For Grahl, communication is one of the major necessities for establishing a happy relationship. He and his wife have been together for more than 10 years and have two children.
“We constantly communicate about anything remotely important to us as individuals or a family,” Grahl explains. “When I was growing up my mom used to drill into me that ‘99% of marriage is communication. If you can communicate, you can get through anything.’ At this point in marriage, I would say that’s completely true. We talk about our hopes for the future, where we want to be individually, as a couple and as a family. If there is a disagreement or a fight, we never just ‘let it go,’ we talk about it until each of us understands the other’s point of view and we come to an understanding, apologies are said, etc.”
Marcus Geduld
Geduld describes himself as a “former dateless nerd,” who is now more than 20 years into the same relationship. It wasn’t known whether Geduld had ever decided to file for divorce in a previous relationship, but as to the current, more than two decades is an admirable track record. He believes in spending “a lot of our alone time together.”
“We both love sitting on the sofa, doing our own thing,” he said. “My wife may watch TV while I post answers on Quora, or she may do a crossword puzzle while I read. It’s nice to be in the same room together without any expectation that one of us has to amuse the other.”
Cyndi Perlman Fink
Fink and her husband have been together 41 years. (Wow.) She credits being able to laugh together as one of the keys to their commitment. “We started out laughing. We’re still laughing,” she said. “He’s so funny. It’s why I fell in love with him. Every once in a while I make him really laugh unexpectedly and he says, ‘I do the jokes.’”
“Is he kidding? Yes, he’s kidding, I think,” Fink added.
Laughter is one of the biggest signs of happiness, and the more that you can bring it to the other person (and vice versa), the more it shows that you respect one another’s happiness.
As an online divorce site, we see many clients, who aren’t sure if they’ll ever find true love again. But through communication, appreciating your alone time together, and sharing laughter (almost) every day, you can find it again. That’s what worked for the happy spouses above, and it can work for you, too.