Not just sitting on the front porch

I just got an invitation in the mail. Another 50th wedding anniversary. Incredible! The summer my son was born, four summers ago, I had three 50th wedding anniversaries to attend for two aunts/uncles on my mom's side and one aunt/uncle on my dad's side. This one is for my mother's cousin.

These people are my examples, and what wonderful examples they are in many, many ways.

When I first got married, almost 19 years ago, I couldn't imagine being married for even a year. It just seemed like such a long span of time to a young kid. Once the first year mark was attained, the rest just kind of followed without much anxiety on my part. 50 years still seems like a huge milestone in my eyes.

My maternal grandparents also made 50 years. My family is blessed. I am blessed. Even my areligious parents-in-law are a good example. They are coming up on 50 years too.

I found a calculator to determine the odds of my making it to my 50th wedding anniversary. It was approximately 25%. Seems kind of questionable to me. I don't even think it takes into account life span, life style, temperment, etc. It just looks at your age when you got married, education level, how religious you consider yourself, number of kids, previous marriages, and prior divorces.

According to the blog I found this on:
Now that you've seen the generic probability that you'll still be married to your current spouse at the anniversary of your marriage that you entered, you may have more questions than answers. If the probability is really low, that might be a good place to begin a conversation with your spouse.

Obviously, the person writing this hasn't been married too long since part of the magic of staying married for decades is to know when to just leave well enough alone. Starting a conversation about the low probability of making it to our 50th wedding anniversary is not a good idea. With both of us being engineers, we tend to be practical/pragmatic, so would figure if the train we are on isn't going to make it to the station, get off now and try to find one that will!

Where was this information when I got married? What do we need priests to counsel about marriage for? Maybe the odds makers in Las Vegas should be required to provide this information to prospective couples as a public service. Save everyone the time and trouble and just use a handy-dandy calculator!