My take is the secret to keeping it together is to manage the changes people go through. To expect a person to be like your high school sweetheart is naive. Second major issue is our culture puts kids first and they are around for a long time causing all kinds of issues.

Thank you NYT!
I LOVE this article--the faces of the couples are so sweet and their love just radiates from the page. I just finished reading the articles about Trump's audio comments and was so disgusted. This article puts everything into perspective. Thanks again!

Never having dated anyone, I met Don in Art Class in the 10th grade. I’ve always wondered if our seat assignments were set up. I presumed that my teacher was a lesbian and she sat two boys people presumed were gay next to each other. We hit it off immediately. We didn’t even admit our feelings for months but it was obvious to everyone around us. The year was 1978 and we were outed in front of our parents at McDonalds. We fought back against the bullies and won. We showed our parents that we would fight back and protect each other. Luckily our parents had the wisdom to see that two previously lonely boys were strong together and laughing and happy. They didn’t try to break us up. Our parents did not believe it was our choice. When AIDS hit the nation we were informed by our parents that they wanted us to remain monogamous. We became successful. At our wedding thirty years later in 2008 both of our families were truly happy for us. Our lives are better than we ever could have imagined 38 years later. Today, our closest friendships are with other couples who happen to be high school sweethearts. None of them are gay.

Very touching. The ideas offered about what goes into maintaining a long-term relationship could also apply to LGBT couples. Young LGBTers can be full of questions and doubts. They need to know that such a relationship can also be true for them. It takes work, commitment, and a willingness to listen to your mate. This article brightened my morning, and I wish these couples many more years together.

Not every relationship, and not every marriage, is worth preserving. The happiness of the participants also matters, and when respect and consideration for the other go -- or are discovered to have been feigned -- then there is nothing intrinsically wrong about moving on to the next stage of your separate lives.

Thank you for this lovely article. My husband and I met in Italy when we were 14 and we did not even speak the same language. Our birthdays are ten days apart. Our mothers had been childhood friends. We dated at 16, got together at 20, and have not been apart a day since then. We celebrated our 40th birthdays together last year in a 40/20 party- 20 years together!! Even though we were children when we met and basically when we began to date, I could not ask for a better partner in life. We have five children together and I look forward to growing old together. There are no secrets as far as I am concerned to a successful marriage- just honesty, work, and affection! Thank you for this happy article in such bleak time!

Fairy tales can come true - it can happen to you...
If you're young at hearts...

You can go to extremes with impossible schemes...
You can laugh when your dreams are now one - with no seams...

................................

So many folks - coming near to the end of days - plead and bargain for...

"One more day for me"

If you should be fortunate to find yourself wanting to plead and bargain for...

"One more day for us"...

You will have already been to heaven...

By the way MHR, the article could just have easily used "Characteristcs" instead of "Secrets." More clinical but less friendly or engaging. No one really thinks these folks have "secrets" we can't know! Many of sociological and psychological studies on marriage are often straight out codifications of what couples participating in the study say are the values and characteristics and rules of behavior they use to govern their relationship. This is a looser anecdotal presentation of those same characteristics, minus the statistics and "clinicalizing" that is pretty dull and often hard to translate into real life. Let's not over-analyze it.

What beautiful pictures! So much love is clear in each frame. I do want to say that I think the Gray's wedding picture is absolutely lovely and one of the best wedding photos I've ever seen. They are just adorable together.

To all the couples in the younger years of marriage: You have been together a long time by virtue of your early meeting and commitment, but be very good to each other as you both move through middle age. Pay close attention to each during this time because it's almost like another adolescence, with surprises and changes you cannot anticipate but can weather if everyone is mindful.

Finally, to MHR in Boston, I guess if more high schools were supportive of non-heterosexual relationships and marriage rights for all were not just a recently hard-won option for non-heterosexual couples, this article would have such couples to include. But that isn't the reality. A few decades from now, such couples will likely be commonplace, hopefully:) But that is not reason to feel disenfranchised by this article. I think we should absolutely celebrate the joy in other peoples lives and share the stories of that joy as a community. To feel diminished by the joy of others is just a stingy way to live. Don't go there if you can avoid it. Just a bit of hard won wisdom.

It seems strange to still be heralding marriage as such an ideal when in reality, it is getting further and further from the norm. Nice to see that some couples are happy, but in truth, many more are not and relationships end every day. I've been married twice, for a total of 25 years. None of it was easy. Guess I didn't have the "secret" that these folks do. I'm much happier and more myself after living alone than I ever was when I was in my marriages. There are many ways of living a successful and contented life. Perpetuating the myth that marriage is the best of them is dishonest.

That the NYT published an article in 2016 about keys to success in long-term relationships without including even one same-sex couple is incredibly offensive. While the sentiments expressed are sweet, the idea that only heterosexual married couples are worthy of being represented, especially after the long fight for marriage equality in this country, culminating only a few years ago, shows an editorial approach frozen in the 1950s. Including couples who managed to make it from high school to their mid-20s without breaking up is charmingly misguided and foolish, but the idea that no NYT editor saw the glaring omission of same-sex couples as a problem is highly troubling.

As one who, at age 86, is still contentedly married to his girlfriend since age 19, I have only one lifelong observation to offer. Just do it. Love is not so much a feeling as it is a course of committed behavior. Commit and stay committed. The rest will take care of itself.

That last story--about the boy who turned around, saw a girl (a stranger), and said to his friend, "I'm going to marry her one day"--and did--this kind of love-at-first-sighting situation leading to a long and happy marriage happens more often than most people realize. It happened to my father and mother, who were married 45 years--his friend who witnessed that first encounter told me about it. I've heard of other similar accounts, as well.

Please excuse me for a moment while I brag about the love of my life.
I'm 64 and my wife is 57...
We met in school in 1979, became a couple in 1980, quite literally on her 21st birthday, then married in 1984.
I just came from the kitchen where I shared this story with her as she cooked up some rice and vegetables. While I watched her, I wondered what happy secret I might share with others.
I concluded that you'd have to ask her. Ask her how she manages to look as beautiful to me today as the day I met her. Every time I see her, I think the same thing: Wow! It's like I never saw her before or whatever.
That said, she drives me crazy...
I become vexed with her over some trivial nothing while we walk over to the park, which we do almost every day, so she says, "Who else do you see out walking with their sweetie, huh?"
Truth to tell, virtually all of the others we see out walking are just walking their dogs. I'd find that sort of sad, but I have to tell you...
Those people we see out with their dogs generally look very happy.
Now, why are they so happy?
Hmm...

Love this article! Thanks for a positive piece of writing heading into the weekend. Would love to see more of these. Met at 16 and 18, married 10 years later, now married 13 years, two kids, two jobs, still in love. The secret? We make each other laugh every day and we're still physically very attracted to each other. Have there been struggles along the way? Absolutely, but we both try to put the other person first and work as a team. His commitment to me is unwavering, and I cherish him. He knows me better than anyone. We've grown up together, and we continue to evolve together.

All nice stories. I'm glad these couples found happiness. What I find problematic is the idealization of long-lasting heterosexual love as the only one that brings fulfillment in life. The piece assumes that these couples possess "secrets" that the rest of us don't have. It seems to imply that every other path to love is somehow flawed. The truth is there are many different ways of loving. I don't think there are "secrets" that work for everyone.

I thought there was going to be more from people married more than 25 years. No offense to the young folks, but I don't know if people in their 20s or 30s really understand it yet. There are just so many phases of the journey that come with time. Married at 20 and 22 in 1986. Best advice? Both people have to put their partner's interests first. Both. Sincerely care about each other and talk, talk, talk. But, more than anything else, make each other laugh.

The 30-60 year relationships, fine. But if you're giving kudos to couples for staying together for less than a decade, things have come to a sorry pass.
(Speaking as a very happy half of a 37-year marriage...)

Any comment from the NYT on the decision to not include even one gay partnership?

Met freshman year of high school (I saw her in a glee club recital and planned to date her), started dating junior year (she made me ask permission of my former girlfriend) married the year after college graduation, 1973. We've been colleagues in our work, partners in our lives, best friends and still are lovers. Advice? Trust!!! Give trust, have trust, live up to that trust.