You Don't Find the Right Person. You Choose Them. Repeatedly.

When people learn I've been married for 30 years, I often see a familiar look cross their faces. It's a mixture of awe and curiosity, sometimes followed by questions that all circle around the same assumption: "You must have found your soulmate." Or: "You two must be perfect for each other."

Let me tell you the truth: my marriage hasn't lasted because we're perfect for each other. It's lasted because we chose to stay imperfect together.

There's a dangerous romance in the idea that some people are simply destined for each other, that long marriages are proof of perfect compatibility, of finding that one person who completes you. It's the stuff of movies and love songs, and it sounds beautiful.

It's also not how real marriages work.

Long marriages aren't proof that some people are just "meant to be." They're proof that some people choose to stay through multiple out phases and build multiple love stories with the same person.

My 30-year marriage isn't one continuous love story. It's been several different love stories, all with the same co-author.

Here's what those three decades have actually looked like: it's been harder than I expected. More boring than anyone warns you about. More repetitive than seems fair.

My career changed directions more than once. My partner stood by me through transitions that made no sense on paper, through risks that kept us both up at night, through moments when even I wasn't sure what I was doing. That trust and support didn't come from some mystical "meant to be" connection. It came from a choice, a daily, sometimes exhausting choice to believe in us even when the path forward was unclear.

We've faced family challenges that tested everything we thought we knew about ourselves and each other. We've had the same argument in slightly different forms across multiple decades. We've gone through periods where the passion cooled and the connection felt more like routine than romance.

And yet, and this is the part that matters, it's also been deeper than I could have imagined. More real than the fantasy version. More sustainable than any relationship built on perpetual excitement could ever be.

You don't find the perfect person and then everything is easy. You find someone worth choosing and then you choose them. Over and over. Through the in phases and the out phases.

That's what "for better or worse" actually means. Not that worse won't come, it absolutely will. But that you'll stay through worse and choose your way back to better.

I've watched friends leave good marriages during the "worse" phases. They interpreted disconnection as incompatibility, boredom as a sign they'd made the wrong choice, conflict as proof the relationship was broken. They thought worse meant it was over.

But long marriages understand something crucial: worse is just a phase. And phases change if you stay long enough to let them.

Here's something no one tells you when you're standing at the altar, eyes full of tears and hearts full of forever: you'll fall out of love. Probably more than once.

It's normal. It's not a sign you chose wrong or that the marriage is dying. The falling out isn't failure.

Leaving during the out phase is.

I've been in the out phase. Times when my partner felt more like a roommate than a lover, when the excitement had drained away, when I looked at this person across the breakfast table and felt... neutral. Not angry, not passionate, just neutral.

Those were the moments that defined our marriage more than the passionate ones. Because those were the moments when we had to choose to stay. To choose to do the work. To choose to believe that the "in" phase would come back around if we were patient enough, intentional enough, committed enough.

And it always did. Not because of magic or destiny, but because we chose back in.

The person I married 30 years ago is not the same person I'm married to today. And I'm certainly not the same person they married.

We've been young and broke together. We've been established and stable together. We've been parents of young children together, and parents of adults together. We've been each other's cheerleader through career pivots that would have been easier to discourage than support. We've been each other's anchor through family storms that could have pulled us apart.

Each phase has been its own love story. The love of our twenties looked nothing like the love of our forties, which looks nothing like the love we're building now.

And that's exactly as it should be.

If there's one thing I'd tell someone in a struggling marriage, someone in the out phase wondering if this is it, it's this: choose back in. See what happens.

Not because staying is always right. Not because every marriage should or can be saved. But because phases change if you give them time. Because the work of choosing is what creates the depth. Because the version of love on the other side of "worse" is often more profound than the version that came before.

My 30-year marriage has been my greatest success not because it's been easy, but because we learned that success isn't about avoiding the hard parts. It's about staying through them. It's about building something sustainable rather than something perpetually exciting.

It's about understanding that "the one" isn't someone you find. It's someone you choose. And then choose again. And again.

For 30 years and counting.