It’s always nice to hear a couple say that after 40 years in marriage their relationship is solid! It’s a real witness that gives courage and hope especially to young couples who are sometimes afraid to marry.
Now we come to your question, with its underlying desire to have a fuller communion between both of you, despite being together for many years. The great thing about love is that you can keep on going deeper in your relationship; indeed experience shows that, in love, if you do not go forward, you end up going backwards.
All meaningful relationships, not just those of couple, are comparable to those wooden towers that we build up as we place one block on top of another.
The pieces in a relationship are placed above each other with so much effort and care, perhaps ever since we were young. How much effort did you put in to reach such a height; then a small involuntary movement and the whole tower collapses!
So it is in a relationship; it demands our attention, a finesse in our gestures, and progressively learning to control our emotions better. The people with whom we live, although they may seem quite confident, often hide their own weaknesses, and they have a deep longing to be understood, to be appreciated, so our small and inevitable failures in their regard come to be perceived as signs of mistrust.
Thus that harmony established can be easily broken. This is not necessarily the other’s fault for each of us has his or her limits. We all need to have the others’ confirmation which can invigorate relationships: criticisms on the other hand, even slight ones, can weaken a relationship.
This, however, should not scare us, because the relationship we have built is real and solid, but it surely demands our best efforts. When we realize that we have broken the unity been built over time, we should apologize immediately with gestures of tenderness, without dwelling on our rights which have been violated.
Fatigue is often the primary cause of carelessness that wounds others. So in moments of stress, we must be particularly vigilant to avoid inappropriate remarks.
