one bookworm, one tough guy, two nerds who love monsters & music: what does it take to stay married?

this is an interesting article that might explain it a little...
- i've been with fellows before & he with females where... it just didn't work & you could see it by a quick glance at a pic. there was no wow, no excitement, no connection obvious -- even in photograph! in worse cases, we were w/humans that not only didn't complement us, they made us look flat-out ugly; people view such pix & feel uncomfortable! you look & wonder: what are they THINKING?
- james makes me look better & i make him look better; it's always been that way. this is one of my favorite pics of us, from the "before" days when things were relatively simple, which means, for us, full of strife & chaos but we were in it TOGETHER -- we lived on that pink cloud that exists at the early stages of all relationships, the one in which you don't really know the person yet & idealize him/her... through it all, we've had chemistry -- some wonderful alloys, some explosions, always mixing, combining, interacting, creating.
the real work, the part that separates men/women from boys/girls, is not giving up once that pink cloud floats away or dissipates... for instance, my folks have been married 47+ years. they are my ultimate role model of sticking with it. divorce has NEVER been an option for them -- not due to religious or cultural mores, but because they understand that diamonds form under intense pressure; that from the sand irritating the oyster's maw comes the pearl; that forests are destroyed by fire to promote new growth; & so on & so on. not to mention that they totally are devoted to one another & realize their talents as complementary, that together they create a whole much stronger, wiser, & fuller than they do individually. even when they sometimes hate each other, which they've admitted, they always have loved each other & always will. in this life, they will never abandon one another; that i know.
when couples reach that realization, i believe nothing can tear them asunder & nothing will cause them to end it unless there has been a total mistake & one or both of them all along have been seriously flawed, unable to overcome what the big book calls "grave emotional & mental disorders"... we still have hope about this experiment, although to stay married 47 years would be quite a feat since by then we'd each be past 90 years old... who knows? i've lived clean for nearly 20 yrs & james has mutant genes. maybe we can last. maybe we can endure.