The other morning I went to a Starbucks I am well acquainted with and know the flow of customer traffic.  I went at a time when there would be a really good cross section of people: high school and college students, young adults, and older people.  I concentrated at first on high school students; I knew they were just killing a few minutes before hurrying on to school. 

I went from table to table, sitting down in a chair, and saying to the somewhat surprised students sitting around the table, “I’m William Bradshaw.  I’m a writer working on an article, and I need your help.  Would you mind answering a few questions?”  The responses were always in the affirmative. Read more…

Staff members at a local Starbucks I frequent for hot chocolate learned that my wife and I recently celebrated our sixtieth wedding anniversary.  They are all relatively young, and sixty years seems like a long time to them.  So they asked me to write about some of the things a couple has to do in order to make it together for that long. 

In this day and age when so many married couples find they are not a match for each other and call it quits, it is not surprising that today’s younger adults find sixty years of marriage to be very unusual.  When my wife and I were married, celebrating a fiftieth anniversary was hailed as the “golden” anniversary that everyone was in awe of.  The fiftieth anniversary is still very special.  But today many marriages bypass the golden anniversary, as well as the sixtieth, and it is not unheard of for people to celebrate seventy-five years together, or even longer.  So there are many others who are more qualified than I to write about what it takes to make a marriage work.  But I will share my thoughts about making a marriage a lasting relationship. Read more…