Episode 264 - Tip for a Happy Marriage

Justin Hayward is a sort of archivist for romantic relationships. He is 72 and still going strong. Two 'Live' performances book-end this cast, which is intended as fresh therapy towards a happy marriage.

Appeals to grace, forgiveness, and empathy in relating to this impossibly different person with whom you are now living, are good. They are probably the only behaviors that will turn your ship around. That is, if it needs turning around.

But when the stresses involved in over-committedness and sheer over-work threaten not just to get you off course but to sink you -- that's when this tip for a happy marriage becomes, suddenly, decisive.

My tip is that you go back to the source, ad fontes -- back to where the relationship began. After all, what started the two of you? What was the juice, the fuel, the electricity, the sub-atomic reaction? Whatever it was partakes of the undying, of the eternal, of the soul. That may sound a little exalted, but "exalted" is how you felt.

You can clearly see this sub-atomic reality in Melody, a 1971 English film about a 12-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl who fall in love. Altho' the boy processes it a little differently than the girl, it all happens in "Just One Look" (The Hollies, 1964). Once that look is exchanged, there is almost no going back.

I remember the exact moment in time when I first saw Mrs. Zahl. It was "across a crowded room", I mean, seminar room, in college. I don't think she saw me gleichzeitig; but for me, yes, it was "Just One Look".

If your relationship's, let us say, a little strained just now -- or a little on-the-shelf due to the pressure of other things -- well, you probably have to go "Back to Where It All Begins" (Allman Bros., 1994). Note the presence tense: your relationship began there, but it also begins there!

Oh, and listen again to "Question" (1970). Justin Hayward wrote it when he was not much more than 19. But the wisdom of it is ageless. LUV U!