In her memoir Lots Of Candles, Plenty Of Cake, Anna Quindlen offers these reflections on marriage, longevity, and parenting:
If a marriage is to endure over time, it has to be because both people within it have tacitly acknowledged something that young lovers might find preposterous: it’s bigger, and more important, than both of us. It’s love, sure, and inside jokes and conversational shorthand. But it’s also families, friends, traditions, landmarks, knowledge, history. It’s children, children whose parents’ marriage is bedrock for them even if they’re not children anymore. Perhaps especially if they’re not children anymore.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read a better take on a more important subject.