2007 New Year's Eve speech (a bit late)

In 2007 Deanne and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary. People have asked me the secret to a happy marriage and I respond: declining eyesight and loss of short term memory. But of course the answer is simpler than that: Love.

Love does funny things to us – it destroys our desire to make decisions. In fact, I bet that we lose the desire to make decisions in over 90% of the matters where a decision has to be made. Love doesn’t make us stupid; it is just that we want our partner to be happy. So we no longer care to make the decision. We want them to be happy. So we no longer care about the decision. For example, “where do you want to eat tonight?” or “what dress should I wear?” When our partner responds: “I don’t care,” this really means: “this is one of those 90% of decisions that I really want you to be happy about so whatever you want is what I want.” “I don’t care” really means “I care so much about you that I want you to be happy.”

However, these 90% decisions have to be made so you have to come up with some way to make them or unhappiness will result. I was driving with Deanne and her folks. We were driving to Tucson and reached the north of Phoenix about dinnertime. Someone asked: “Where do you want to eat?” No one would make the decision. By the time we had driven all the way through Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, everyone was angry with everyone else. I finally blurted out “Let’s eat at Denney’s.” We stopped at one on the next interchange and everyone was happy again.

That leaves the 10% of the decisions that you do care about. Luckily, 90% of those 10% will be decisions your spouse doesn’t care about. So if you come home and feel like a Wendy’s triple combo with extra bacon, feel free to say “Boy, I’d really like to eat at Wendy’s tonight.” 90% of the time the response will be great, let’s go, because your partner loves you and they can see that this will make you happy.

Two problems here: sometimes what you have decided involves doing something without your spouse. For example, an evening with the ladies or a weekend hiking with the guys. That is great, no problem. Your spouse wants you to be happy. However, you must remember to say one thing when you get home: “I had a great time, but I really missed you a lot.” You did, but you can’t forget to say it. Second is that 1% of decisions where you both have a strong desire to make a particular decision. Sometimes you will get lucky and you will both agree. You both may feel the need for that triple combo with extra bacon. But most of the time you won’t agree. You need to figure out how to handle these occasions as rare as they may be.

My first suggestion is to properly label the situation. You say: “This is one of those 10% decisions I really want to make.” And your partner says: “It is for me too.” O.K., now we know we still love each other and that isn’t at issue. But we do need to make the decision.

Second suggestion: compromise. When we were first married, Deanne and I talked about how many kids we wanted. I said “one” (sorry Jordan, Jackie, Kip and John). Deanne said “five.” So we compromised and decided on 5. See how well compromise works.

Third, remember how difficult it is to predict what will make us happy. In the vast majority of decisions, there is no eternal consequence that we can predict from the making of the decision. A vacation to the mountains or the beach doesn’t matter because with the right frame of mind both can be great. The only way to spoil it is to act spoiled, “I can’t have fun at the beach because I wanted to go to the mountains.” Grow up.

At Christmas, Deanne wanted to go to Jerusalem. I didn’t. There were other places I would have much preferred to visit. She wanted to go with a tour group and I hate tour groups. With a good attitude (surprising Deanne most of all) I went and had one of the best experiences I have ever had. I am so glad Deanne owned that decision and I compromised.

A very small percentage of decisions we can understand will have eternal consequences. First, decide once and for all to make decisions in accordance with the Gospel. “Do nothing that you cannot ask God for help in doing” to quote Krieger family rule five. We were prayerful over the decision to invest and fully participate in the Montana business. It failed and cost us a lot financially and emotionally. But its failure freed us up to come to Africa. Who could have predicted that?

We love you and want your happiness. I hope this helps.