Let’s get one thing straight:
Having kids and having a long, happy marriage are not the same skill.

Mother Nature gives you all the instinct you need for kids—urge, hormones, the full evolutionary nudge. But for a marriage that lasts 60 years? There’s no hormone for patience, no libido for humility, and no primal instinct that prepares you for the unbearable frustration of a dishwasher that won’t start.

Take last night.
It was a senior slapstick tragedy in our kitchen—the kind that makes you wonder if FEMA should issue alert bracelets for the over-80 crowd. No blood, no broken bones, just a couple of octogenarians pacing on the linoleum, yelling over a rebellious appliance.

I was under the sink, contorting like a Navy SEAL—if Navy SEALs wore bifocals and barked curses at outlet cords.

Why?
Because the dishwasher wouldn’t start. Not a light. Not a beep. It sat there like guests at a funeral. I jiggled connections, checked breakers, flipped all 30 fuses in the basement—nothing. Then the TV stopped working. Appliances across the house had joined a general strike.

In a fit of despair and marital diplomacy, I said to her:
“OK, Smarty. You fix the damn circuitry.”
To which she said nothing. Just calmly opened the dishwasher, reached inside, and removed a plastic salad bowl that had tipped over, blocking the spray arm.

BOOM. Lights on. Washer humming. TV glowing. The Great Uprising was over.

I had spent an hour in battle with the appliance mafia when all it took was removing one lopsided salad bowl.

And that, friends, is marriage.
You can have instincts for romance, for parenting, even for fixing things—but it’s humility, grace, forgiveness, and plastic bowls that keep the marriage going.

Raising children is biological.
But lasting marriage is a learned art.

We’ve made it 60 years because we’ve learned when to laugh, when to shut up, and when to hand over the salad bowl. That’s the real survival skill.

Ignore the small stuff. Appliances break. Egos bruise. Bowls tip.
But love, laughter, and the willingness to say “Maybe you’re right”—those keep the lights on.