If we could sit across from the two kids who said 'I do' thirty-eight years ago, we would keep it short.

First: most of the fights you are about to have will not matter. You will not remember them. Do not spend your best energy winning them.

Second: the habits will matter enormously. The ordinary rhythms — praying together, going to bed at the same time, saying the hard thing early — are the load-bearing walls.

Third: you will both change. Repeatedly. The person you are married to at fifty is not the person you married at twenty. Recommit to who they are becoming, not to who they were.

And the one commitment that carried everything else: we agreed, out loud, that leaving was not on the table. Removing the exit changes how you fight. When there is no door, you learn to fix the room.