幸福婚姻 白头偕老的秘密

-- Find the middle ground. "It's all give and take," says Marlene Critch, a retired hospital director in Tucson. She met her husband Bill on a blind date in 1959. He took her on a picnic with a thermos of gin and tonics; they married two months later.

Flash ahead 50 years. The Critches have raised two daughters in Seattle and weathered his severe heart condition. They swim together each morning, and he reads her children's books when she has trouble falling asleep at night.

Compromise, they say, got them through the good and bad times. Mr. Critch, 75, says he compromised by quitting the Air Force early in their marriage, because it bothered her that he was away from home so much. (Press him for more concessions, and he says, "Miso soup.")

Ms. Critch, 74, says she made her own compromise by agreeing to retire to Arizona, where her husband preferred the climate. (She wanted to stay in Seattle to be close to their daughters.)

"If each person can give 75 percent, you've got 150 percent," says Ms. Critch. Her husband agrees. "Many men would call that wussy," he says. "But I don't because I value her more than anything else in the world."

Similarly, Jan and Len Konkel, who have been married for 62 years, long ago made a pact to never argue over anything that wasn't very important, saving their battles for things like how to raise their three children. "Everything else is minor and can be settled in a discussion," says Ms. Konkel, 84.

Her husband, well, agrees. "I say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am' a lot," says Mr. Konkel, 88.