Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on IHeartRadio.

A lot of you agreed with the advice I gave the couple who wrote in last week.

To recap, a woman wrote in saying she's 32 and her boyfriend is 36.

They've been dating for six years and she wrote in with the concern that

despite the fact that they voted similarly, they're both Republicans who voted for Trump. She's moving

rightward and he's moving leftward. I told them that politics wasn't actually their problem.

It's that they've been together for six years and are not engaged,

not moving forward. And a lot of you agreed with that. I had lunch with a new friend this week,

and we talked relationships and how I think it's the moving forward together that really

keeps a relationship going. I'm married for nearly 16 years, but we're constantly thinking about

our future. What are our summer plans? Not just this summer, but also summer 2026. Our youngest

child is nine, but what are we thinking for when the kids are out of the house? How long will we stay

in our current house? It'll be too big for us, but we also love

the idea of them having a comfortable home to come back to whenever they want and bring our grandkids

back too. I know life happens and the future you picture doesn't always work out the way you

think it will. It's a common story.

I'm not saying that moving forward immediately inoculates you from that.

Plenty of people have been married 20 years, 30 years pictured their future lives together

and had it end abruptly. It happens, I know. But it helps when you're looking outward in the

same direction. It helps sustain your current relationship to think about the future together.

I would say that while building toward a future together doesn't 100% mean that the future will

work out the way you intend. If you're

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