Is a good marriage one that just lasts a long time?

Here's a reality check.

Hitting 50 years is actually quite rare.

Only about 7.7% of current U.S. marriages have reached the golden anniversary mark.

And among older long-married adults, research using a nationally representative survey

finds that more than half describe their marriages

not as fully supportive, but as ambivalent, indifferent, or even aversive. So in other words,

secure on paper, but not necessarily thriving. So we know this is the gray divorce, which is

people that get divorced after 50. And

it's nearly doubled from 1990 to 2008. And it's been hovering there ever since. So longevity

is meaningful, but it's not the same thing as health. Today we'll ask what does a healthy marriage look like beyond just

staying together. And today's episode is actually an ask episode. So this was inspired by a question

that came into our texting line at Eros. We get lots of texts, questions that come in via text

that were not able to get to at the event, but we wanted to start

getting to some of them here through the podcast. So this is the question that came into the texting

line. This person said, is a good marriage defined by just staying married a long time, or is

reaching a 50 year anniversary a sign of a good, healthy marriage. I feel like most people just settle for an

okay marriage. So recently, we were in a shuttle. We were in Cancun, and we were driving back to the

airport. And there was a couple sitting next to us. Um, when we struck up conversation,

they asked us why we were there. We said, hey, you know, we were here because we had a whole bunch

of couples with us. We were doing a marriage retreat. And it was. We said, hey, we were here because we had a whole bunch of couples with us.

We were doing a marriage retreat, and it was wonderful. And they said, wow, we've been married for 30

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