42 Years Married: What I'd Tell My 22-Year-Old Self

We were kids. She was my high school sweetheart. I was confident in exactly the way that means you have no idea what you're doing. We said the vows, meant them, and had absolutely no framework for what came next. No one sat us down and said: you will feel like strangers to each other at year 7, and that doesn't mean it's over. No one told us that love is a verb long before it's a feeling.

Forty-two years later, I can tell you this: marriage is the most demanding growth environment I've ever been in. More than the doctorate. More than leading a school district. More than any race or physical challenge. Because it asks you to be known — fully, inconveniently, on the bad days — and to keep choosing anyway. That's not romance. That's formation.

Here's what I wish someone had told me at 22: learn your spouse's love language and speak it fluently, not yours — theirs. Repair quickly. Never let a wound calcify into a wall. Choose curiosity over certainty — your spouse is changing, and your job is to keep getting to know who they're becoming. And fight for the marriage when you don't feel like fighting for your spouse, because the feeling will come back if you don't abandon the structure.

We have four kids, five grandkids, 42 years of memories, and more road ahead than we deserve. It didn't happen by accident. It happened because two stubborn, imperfect people decided that quitting wasn't a category. If you're in it — the hard part, the dry season, the place where you can't remember why you liked each other — I'm not here to give you advice. I'm here to tell you: stay. Do the work. It's worth it.