I met my husband in 1982, at a county fair under the flickering lights of a Ferris wheel. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and carried the kind of quiet that made you lean in.

I was twenty, too young to know that a smile and a steady hand weren’t enough to predict what the next forty years would demand of us.

We married the following spring in a church with peeling paint and daisies in Mason jars. I thought I was walking into a fairy tale. What I didn’t know was that marriage isn’t a fairy tale—it’s a battlefield where you choose, every day, whether to keep fighting or to retreat.

The first few years were sweet. We worked long shifts, ate burnt dinners, and fell asleep laughing in the tiny apartment where the heater rattled louder than the TV. We didn’t have much, but we had each other. That felt like enough.

Then life started bending the road.

When he came back from his deployment, he wasn’t the same man I’d kissed goodbye. He drank too much, shouted too quickly, and sometimes stared at the wall like he was still over there instead of here with me. I remember one night, sitting on the kitchen floor with the smell of spilled whiskey in the air, wondering if this was the part where I should pack up and leave.

Everyone around me had an opinion. “You don’t owe him your suffering.” “You deserve better.” “If you’re not happy, walk away.” And I thought about it—God knows I did. Happiness felt like a door that kept slamming shut on me.

But here’s what no one tells you: marriage isn’t built in the sunshine. It’s forged in the storms.

I stayed. Not because it was easy. Not because I was happy every day. I stayed because I believed the man I married was still inside him somewhere, buried under the weight of what he carried home. And if he couldn’t hold on to himself, then maybe I could hold on for both of us until he found his way back.

It took years. Counseling. Fights that left us raw. Nights where I cried into my pillow so no one would hear. But slowly, piece by piece, he came back. He laughed again. He planted tomatoes in the backyard. He quit drinking. He became a grandfather who builds treehouses and sneaks cookies to the kids when I’m not looking.

Fast forward to last summer—our fortieth wedding anniversary. The whole family gathered in our backyard under strings of lights. Our children gave speeches. [This story was written by Things That Make You Think. Elsewhere it’s an unauthorized copy.] My daughter, honest as always, said, “I don’t know how you two lasted this long. If it were me, I would’ve left years ago. Life’s too short to be miserable.”

Some people nodded. A few clapped. And for a moment, I felt small—like maybe they were right, like maybe I’d been foolish to fight so hard for something so broken.

Then I looked at my husband. His hands are shaky now. His memory slips. He forgets names, loses track of days. But when he looked at me across that table, I saw the boy from the Ferris wheel. The man who fought his demons and came back. The one who still reaches for my hand under the covers every night.

I stood up and said something I’d never planned to say out loud:

“Maybe happiness isn’t the point. Maybe marriage isn’t supposed to be easy. Maybe it’s supposed to teach us how to love when love doesn’t feel like butterflies anymore. How to forgive when forgiveness feels impossible. How to stay when leaving would be simpler. That’s the beauty no one talks about—the way it changes you, deep down, into someone stronger, someone braver, someone who understands that love is not about always being happy. Love is about always choosing.”

The yard went silent. Some of the younger ones frowned, uncomfortable. Others—older couples with lines around their eyes—nodded with tears they didn’t bother hiding.

And here’s the part that might make people angry: I’m not saying staying is always the answer. There are marriages where leaving is the only way to survive.

But I am saying this—walking away is not the only version of courage. Sometimes, staying is its own kind of bravery. Sometimes, persistence is love in its truest form.

Forty years later, my husband still snores too loud. He forgets to take the trash out. He can drive me insane in a thousand tiny ways. But when I look at the life we built—the children, the grandchildren, the decades stitched together by both laughter and pain—I know this:

We made it. Not because it was easy. Not because it was perfect. We made it because, when the road bent and broke, we bent and broke with it—but we never let go of each other.

That’s what marriage is. Not happiness every day. Not perfection. Not fairy tales.
It’s waking up, looking at the person beside you, and choosing them again—even when the world tells you not to.