This is a great article. I've been married 43 years and cannot begin to tell you why my marriage has been successful. There were about five friends (couples) who got married shortly after my wife and I did and these couples are still married as well.

All of my experience and longevity with marriage has not gotten me one inch closer to identifying its success. Many of the things you wrote are well-conceived ideas and perhaps they apply. However, it seems to me that life is just unpredictable. We do our best and then take our chances for success. Maybe most people don't really do their best, or maybe people lack a few fundamental requirements for compatibility.

You never really know what you're going to get in the long run, but since we are all very different individuals we have to at least expect a lot of compromises and a sincere commitment to interest in our partners.

You wrote: "You’re never in control of who you find but you are always in control of who you are." I am not so sure about this. It seems to me that it's more important to know who you are than to try to control who you are. If you are doing the latter it means you are in conflict, and when you are in conflict you cannot keep up the pace and will revert to what you actually are. Life has far more complexity and dynamism to it that people tend to know; these two factors determine things that are beyond our ability to grasp.