This article is featured in the Herald Sun and is republished with permission.
With Aussie marriages lasting longer than ever before, this masthead spoke with couples who have been together for 5, 10, 25, 40 and 50 years to uncover the secrets to a happy union.
The median duration of marriage to divorce in Australia is 13.2 years, a steady rise from 12.1 years in 2020, the latest government data showed.
The couples interviewed said goal setting, remaining pragmatic during difficult times, and finding shared interests helped to strengthen their marriages.
Meanwhile fertility problems and the early years of raising children caused the greatest strain.
Below, five married couples share their highs, lows and lessons learnt along the way.
5 years: ‘We’re still in our honeymoon phase’
With five years of marriage, two kids and two successful businesses under their belt, Jacob and Nicole Carlile have achieved far more than most people aged in their 20s.
Unlike their peers who might be found at a nightclub or bar, the Queensland couple said they were highly driven to settle down early and focus on achieving their goals.
“We weren’t looking to waste time so we jumped in feet first,” Mr Carlile, 27, said.
“We were together for 12 months before we got engaged, and we married six months later.
“It was love at first sight, I would have gotten married earlier had it been socially acceptable.”
Ms Carlile, 29, felt the same: “I would have married Jacob two months into dating him, but that’s not a normal thing to do in our society, so we waited as long as we could,” she said.
The young couple said their shared business mindset – Ms Carlile runs a gym, while Mr Carlile has a real estate company – has been a huge asset to their marriage.
They set and review goals for their relationship each year, and have undertaken courses and consulted professional coaches and their pastor for support.
“We have been very intentional about setting ourselves up for success,” Ms Carlile said.
“When we’ve grown in our relationship, our businesses have grown respectively too.”
But they said having kids was a “game changer” for their marriage, and impacted the way they see success in their lives – both as a couple and business owners.
“It really was a shift of priorities very quickly,” Mr Carlile said.
“How I see a happy marriage is completely different now to five years ago, because it’s all about how we can raise our kids to create more impact than we as a couple ever could.”
Ms Carlile credited their strong foundation of marriage for making them better parents.
“There’s been ups and downs but there’s an unconditional love with Jacob,” she said.
“For us, having a long-lasting happy marriage is the goal, divorce is not an option, so we both have that mindset of rowing our boats in the same direction.”
Mr Carlile agreed that being united as a team is their biggest strength as a couple and family.
“I’ve never felt with Nicole that I’m the one pulling everyone along, we’re both leading from the back pushing each other forwards,” he said.
“I feel like we’re still in our honeymoon phase, I just love going home – we can do nothing and still enjoy it – and I hope that we can continue to hang out forever and ever.”
10 years: ‘Our connection is not based on age’
Johann and Paige Barr said facing “fierce” judgement over their 14-year age difference initially coloured their relationship and caused them to lose friends.
But after a decade of marriage, they said experiencing such hardship early on strengthened their bond.
“My family heavily judged it because Paige was younger than all of my siblings, they saw it as being creepy,” said Mr Barr, 45, who had also been married previously.
Ms Barr, 31, had the same experience: “I had pull away from a lot of my friends because they weren’t taking it seriously, they just saw a young girl going after this older guy,” she said.
“But our connection is not based on our age – being honest and open, speaking our mind, and showing up for each other has really worked for our relationship.
“We had so many people in our ears saying it’s not going to work – but look at us now.”
Ms Barr, who was a few days away from turning 21 when she got married, said she always wanted “to be a young mum and wife”.
While they now have two boys, aged five and eight, starting a family was difficult – Ms Barr had five miscarriages.
But Mr Barr said their losses helped them discover a shared passion for children and led them to running their joint business, MindChamps, a childcare and early learning franchise.
“It’s really highlighted what we have in common and that is a real hands-on approach to nurturing our children, which is also why we’re in childcare,” he said.
As for the secret to their successful decade-long marriage, the couple credited open communication, not going to bed angry, and building a supportive network. This includes Ms Barr’s parents, who have lived with them for eight years.
“It’s the everyday little things, like a kiss in the morning, holding hands, taking time to be with one another, and not getting caught up in separate paths,” Mr Barr said.
“We’re not perfect, but one thing we do know is that we want our marriage to continue for another 10 years and more – and we’ll do everything to make that happen.”
25 years: ‘Our independence works for us’
When Lara Alexander and John Wayne were ready to start a family, they thought it would come easily – but it ended up being the “hardest time” of their 27-year marriage.
“It was quite the journey, having nine pregnancies to get two kids,” Ms Alexander, 59, said.
“Both of us have big families who had kids pretty quickly and easily, so we were perhaps too blasé thinking it would happen like that for us – it was really tough.
“When we found out we were pregnant, I had gone into hospital thinking I’d had another miscarriage, and when the doctor showed me our baby on the monitor, I was in shock.”
The Melbourne-based couple are now parents to two daughters, aged 21 and 19.
Mr Wayne, 61, said watching his kids grow up made the painful fertility journey worth it.
“We did question what it would be like not having kids, but we kept trying because we both wanted it to happen and we didn’t want to walk away from each other,” he said.
“When the girls were little, it was such a great time in our lives – I would come home from work to this whole routine, going to the park to play, reading them books, it was the best.”
The couple agreed that the strength of their marriage comes from their resilience.
“We’ve not only personally overcome individual difficulties, but our relationship has powered through joint difficulties, and that has bonded us together,” Ms Alexander said.
“Chances are you’re going to be challenged, so you may as well go through it together.”
Ms Alexander first met Mr Wayne on a blind date back in 1994, thinking her friends were pulling a prank by setting her up with the famous American actor of the same name.
“I thought it was a joke when this guy named John Wayne called me,” she said.
“But when we met for coffee, we hit it off straight away and we laughed a lot.”
When Ms Alexander’s lease ended three months into dating, they “quickly” moved in together and got married five years later.
Now that their children are grown up and starting to leave home, the couple said they have made the effort to have their own lives, friendships and interests outside of their relationship – and are introducing new shared hobbies as time goes on.
They said this was important to creating a healthy and long-lasting marriage.
“We don’t have to be with each other every minute,” Mr Wayne said.
“That independence works for us, as does doing new things together – recently for us that’s been gardening, which we’re really bad at.”
Ms Alexander said the time they spent apart made them appreciate being together more, and believed the secret to building a solid marriage was playing to each other’s strengths.
“I’m better at some things, while John’s better at other things but we both contribute – whether that’s with each other, around the house or with the kids,” she said.
“It’s this quiet solidarity that we’re in it together and we don’t take that for granted.”
40 years: ‘Empty nesting was a period of adjustment’
Vern and Linda Gowdie said each decade of their 40-year marriage has been different, but becoming empty nesters was a big change.
The Queensland couple, both aged 66, retired to the Gold Coast – away from their three daughters.
“I was career-minded but I made the choice to be a stay-at-home mum because I really wanted to be the one to raise my kids,” said Ms Gowdie, who was previously working in government while Mr Gowdie was a financial adviser.
“When the girls left home and moved away, empty nesting was a period of adjustment but it gave us an opportunity to work through what we wanted our future to look like.”
They said their strength came from being united as a couple and family.
“The best gift I could give the girls was to love their mum because it creates a good home environment and stability,” Mr Gowdie said.
“We have always been united, and I think that’s helped us to guide our kids – our legacy is having our girls make a positive contribution and hopefully leaving this world a little better.”
The couple first met in London in 1982 and quickly became friends. Two years later, back in Queensland, they started a romantic relationship and were married in 1985.
They have even kept the receipt from their wedding – it cost them $2500 for a reception for 110 people, with the three course-meal less expensive than the Asti Spumante sparkling wine.
Mr Gowdie said being friends first was an important foundation for their marriage.
“They say opposites attract, but we weren’t opposite – we had similar interests, values, morals and we came from the same type of family who worked hard and had integrity,” he said.
“We were good friends and I think that’s why it worked for us – we had common goals right from the start of what we wanted to achieve in life.”
They said their long marriage was a testament to living “practically” and “never taking anything for granted”.
“We’ve always appreciated what we do and what we have,” Ms Gowdie said.
“We’ve worked hard, but we’ve also worked smart and that’s in our careers and also in our marriage – we learned quickly that some things aren’t worth fighting over or fighting for.”
Mr Gowdie agreed: “My philosophy in life is everything is borrowed – nothing is forever, so you must have gratitude for what you do have and pass on what you can,” he said.
50 years: ‘Becoming grandparents brought a new type of love’
After 50 years of marriage, Jeff Szer and Gilla Kraner still see themselves as the “best friends” they were before falling in love as young teenagers.
The couple have navigated ups and downs across the past five decades – weathering some crises they said others would not have survived – but agreed that becoming grandparents has brought them “closer than ever”.
“Being a grandparent felt scary because for me, it represented the end,” Professor Szer, 73, said.
“But it has been an extraordinarily special experience and it’s brought us a new type of love for not only each other, but in a way, I love my children even more now too.”
Professor Szer, then 23, proposed to Dr Kraner back in 1975, after five years of dating.
But they were medical students at the time – and with exams around the corner, they shortened their engagement to just 10 weeks to prioritise their education.
“We had decided that leaving it until after graduation was going to cause extreme stress because then we would be in our intern year,” Dr Kraner, 72, said.
“We had this window of opportunity and it all happened very quickly – we had no money, so we rented everything and we got married in a bowling alley.”
They both said the early years of their marriage were among the hardest.
Professor Szer regularly travelled overseas to pursue a career in haematology, leaving Dr Kraner to primarily look after their two kids while also working as a GP.
“Part of our identities is being doctors, and I knew what it took to become a specialist but being a parent was very hard – there was no paternal leave back then and I felt a lot of anger that Jeff worked so much,” Dr Kraner said.
But they said their strong foundation of friendship helped their marriage survive.
“There’s a deep bond and a love that’s emerged from real friendship, where you would do anything for the other person and that’s been the glue for us,” Professor Szer said.
As for the secret to a long and happy marriage, the couple have two pieces of advice to share.
“We’re very tactile – for us, touch is an important thing and it’s really connecting, we often hold hands, hug and kiss each other hello and goodbye,” Professor Szer said.
For Dr Kraner, it’s about a sincere respect for both sides of the partnership: “I love him, yes, but I also just really like him and being around him,” she said.
“That respect has allowed us to communicate well enough to weather crises that probably would have broken up other relationships – 50 years on, we’re still committed to each other.”
The secrets to a long marriage and the one habit experts say is ruining them
Australian couples say the secrets to a long and successful marriage are to communicate openly, regularly set and review goals, and invest in new hobbies together.
It comes as experts expressed concern over the rise of ‘phubbing’ – snubbing your partner by prioritising your phone – and the impact this behaviour was having on relationships.
With Aussie marriages lasting longer than ever before, this masthead spoke with couples who have been together for 5, 10, 25, 40 and 50 years to uncover the secrets to a happy union.
The median duration of marriage to divorce in Australia is 13.2 years, a steady rise from 12.1 years in 2020, the latest government data showed.
The couples interviewed said goal setting, remaining pragmatic during difficult times, and finding shared interests helped to strengthen their marriages.
Meanwhile fertility problems and the early years of raising children caused the greatest strain.
But relationship experts added the impact of technology to the list of stressors, warning that ‘phubbing’ was unnecessarily causing disconnection in marriages.
Kelly Gough, president of the Australian Psychological Society, said ‘phubbing’ was a “very real behaviour” but suggested phones were not necessarily the problem.
“It’s not really about using your phone, it’s about how you’re using it and the feeling of disconnection or unimportance that creates,” Dr Gough said.
“Humans are very sensitive to attention, so if we’re connecting face-to-face and one person is constantly getting distracted by notifications, then the other can feel very secondary.
“This can lead to conflict, less satisfaction, more jealousy and feeling less emotionally close.”
Dr Gough said “intentional communication” and managing expectations can counter this.
“One person could be at dinner, checking their messages and see it as harmless multi-tasking, while the other may feel emotionally disengaged – talking openly can make a big difference.”
Sahra O’Doherty – president of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc – said phones created an opportunity for “perpetual distraction” in relationships.
“When we rely on our phones for distraction, we revert back to it as a coping mechanism and we end up having split attention, which stops us being present and fully committed,” she said.
Ms O’Doherty said social media apps were particularly dangerous to relationships because they “heighten our need to compare”.
“We’re always looking at what else is out there to the point that we feel like we’re missing out on something – which can make us feel dissatisfied with our partners,” she said.
She advised couples to make their phone “boring” by removing games and distracting apps, intentionally spending time together without devices, and keeping phones out of the bedroom.
Couples therapist Biannka Brannigan said phones can also prolong arguments for couples.
“Our phones can keep us turning away from each other,” she said.
“If a couple has had a fight or some sort of rupture in their relationship, it’s easier to remain distracted with technology because we’d rather numb ourselves than feel uncomfortable.
“Many of us get into a relationship and then we stop thinking about it, but we don’t do that with anything else – not with our fitness, finances, career or kids – marriage is a practice.”