Issue #147 Growing Older is Inevitable, Growing Apart is Likely but Growing Together is Intentional

In last week’s newsletter, I shared the story of having the privilege of officiating my cousin’s wedding. As I prepared for that honour, I found myself reflecting on my own marriage and how it has grown and evolved over the past thirty-two years. It became an opportunity to step back and consider what it is that allows some marriages to deepen over time while others slowly drift apart.

If you missed last week’s newsletter, you can catch up by clicking HERE.

One of the central ideas I explored was David Brooks’ observation that marriage is “a fifty-year conversation.” The longer I have reflected on that simple phrase, the more convinced I have become that it captures something profoundly true. 

The strength of a marriage is rarely determined by extraordinary moments. Rather, it is shaped through thousands of ordinary conversations that gradually weave two separate lives into one shared story.

That led me to what I believe is one of the deepest purposes of marriage.

Marriage, at its best, is not transactional.

It is transformational.

It is an invitation for two imperfect people to become more patient, more forgiving, more generous and more loving than either could become alone.

That realization, however, naturally raises another question.

If marriage is meant to transform us, how does that transformation actually take place?

Over the years, Kelly and I discovered that it doesn’t happen by accident. Like every healthy relationship, it requires intentional rhythms that create space for the conversations that matter most.

Intentional Rhythms

My wife and I certainly didn’t understand any of this when we first got married.

The happy young couple you see pictured above, like most young couples, assumed that because we loved each other, the conversation would simply continue after that day.

For a season, it did.

Life was relatively uncomplicated. We had time and we had margin.

Then careers became more demanding, children arrived and our responsibilities multiplied. Without ever making a conscious decision, we found ourselves talking less about the things that mattered most and more about the logistics of everyday life.

Who’s picking up the kids?

Did you pay that bill?

What time is your meeting tomorrow?

Those conversations weren’t unimportant; they simply weren’t enough.

We eventually realized that if we didn’t intentionally create space for meaningful conversation, life would happily consume every available moment.

I suspect our experience is far from unique. It follows the same quiet realities of life that almost everything meaningful requires intentional cultivation. Gardens don’t remain beautiful simply because they were once planted. Our physical health doesn’t improve without attention. Businesses don’t preserve their culture without continual care.

Why would our relationships be any different?

In fact, in my experience relationships never drift toward greater intimacy. Left unattended, they drift toward familiarity, efficiency and routine. We slowly become exceptionally good at managing life together while gradually becoming less intentional about sharing life together. 

It isn’t that love disappears…it simply becomes buried beneath the demands of everyday living.

That realization eventually changed the way Kelly and I thought about our marriage.

Rather than assuming that time together would naturally strengthen our relationship, we began asking ourselves a different question.

What intentional rhythms would create space for the conversations that help us continue growing together rather than merely growing older together?

Deposits and Withdrawals

One of the simplest ways we have come to think about marriage is through the language of deposits and withdrawals.

Every week life makes withdrawals from a relationship. Stress has a way of doing that. So does fatigue, financial pressure, parenting, disappointment, conflict and the countless interruptions that accompany a busy life. None of them are particularly destructive on their own, yet over time they quietly diminish the emotional reserves that healthy relationships depend upon.

The mistake many couples make is assuming that because there isn’t a major crisis, everything must be fine. Yet relationships rarely deteriorate because of one catastrophic event. More often, they erode through a thousand small moments of neglect that seem insignificant at the time.

One of the reasons Kelly and I began intentionally protecting time each week was because we noticed something about ourselves.

The things we didn’t talk about never disappeared.

More often, they simply accumulated.

Today’s unspoken expectations become tomorrow’s resentments.

And  I believe this also extends far beyond marriage. Silence doesn’t solve problems. It simply postpones them. The conversations we avoid don’t lose their power with time; they usually gain it. Small disappointments quietly become assumptions. Assumptions harden into resentment. Resentment slowly creates distance between two people who genuinely love one another but have stopped inviting each other into what they are experiencing.

Meaningful conversations interrupt that progression.  They create space for misunderstandings to be clarified before they become convictions. They invite forgiveness before resentment quietly takes root. They allow two people to remain emotionally connected even while navigating seasons that are difficult.

Looking back, I am convinced our weekly conversations have done more to strengthen our marriage than almost anything else we have intentionally practiced. Not because they solved every problem, but because they kept small problems from quietly becoming much larger ones. Each conversation became another intentional deposit into our “fifty-year conversation.”

Cultivating Our Garden

The more I have reflected on marriage, the more I have come to believe that it resembles a garden far more than it resembles a machine.

Machines demand our attention only when they stop working.

Gardens invite our attention long before anything appears to be wrong.

Healthy gardens are not the absence of weeds. They are the result of someone continually returning to cultivate what they hope will flourish. They are watered, pruned, nourished and protected long before neglect becomes obvious.

Relationships follow much the same pattern.

Resentment, assumptions, busyness and neglect rarely arrive all at once. They quietly take root wherever intentionality is absent. Left unattended, they slowly crowd out the trust, gratitude and affection that healthy relationships require.

That is why Kelly and I continue protecting time each week for meaningful conversation. It isn’t designed to solve every problem, nor is every conversation profound. More often than not, they are simply opportunities to remain curious about one another’s lives, to celebrate what is going well, to acknowledge where we have fallen short and to speak honestly before small disappointments become larger wounds.

Healthy marriages are not built by waiting for conflict to force difficult conversations.

They are built by cultivating the relationship before the weeds have a chance to grow.

Reflect & Align

Looking back, I don’t believe our weekly conversations strengthened our marriage because we always knew the right things to say.

They strengthened our marriage because they reminded us, week after week, that our relationship deserved our attention.

Love may begin as a feeling.

But it flourishes through intention.

Like every living thing…It requires cultivation.

As you reflect this week, perhaps these questions are worth considering:

• Have our conversations become more about managing life than truly sharing it?
• Am I intentionally making deposits into my closest relationship, or have I unintentionally been making withdrawals?
• What conversation have I been postponing that, with love and honesty, needs to happen before today’s unspoken expectations become tomorrow’s resentments?

The older I get, the more convinced I become that marriage isn’t sustained by one extraordinary conversation.

It is shaped by thousands of ordinary ones.

Time may keep two people together.

Only intentional conversation allows them to continue growing together.

Over the years, Kelly and I have developed a simple framework that helps us move beyond the superficial and into the conversations that continue shaping both our marriage and the people we are becoming.

We call it the GARDEN framework. If you’d like a copy of the questions we use each week, simply send me an email or direct message with the word GARDEN, and I’d be glad to send it your way.

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