Three Ss reveal my recipe for enduring love

As the dating show Bachelor once again graces our screens, I offer you my own criteria for what to look for in a long-term relationship, if that’s what you’re after. Whether you meet your person at a bar, on the internet or at a church youth group, what you need to look for are steadfastness, sex appeal and sense of humour, or SOH as they call it in the personal ads.

Steadfastness is the bedrock for the other qualities. Not just the obvious sexual and emotional faithfulness; steadfastness includes just being there through the ordinary, mundane, tedious and occasionally terrible days that any couple who are together for more than six months will encounter. Steadfastness includes reliability: someone who won’t leave when you are ugly and grumpy and sick and sad, who will do their share of domestic chores and listening to your boring problems when you need them to. Steadfastness includes kindness, and kindness in a partner is almost enough.

Not quite though. The kindest, most faithful person in the world could be, well, boring, which is where the other two Ss come in. Sex appeal isn’t just physical compatibility, it’s the whole package of attractiveness – liking the way your person looks and smells and dresses and spends time and cooks and eats and curls around you in bed. It’s nothing to do with classic good looks as such – it’s the way the entire package of the person makes you feel. It’s the chemistry that can, if you’re very lucky, last a lifetime.

Sense of humour is the icing on the cake. I don’t think I could live with someone who didn’t me laugh, someone who gently takes the mickey out of me when I am taking myself too seriously.

Sense of humour for me doesn’t have much to do with the ability to tell a joke effectively or be a raconteur of funny stories or someone with a quick comeback line for every occasion. Those things are fun, but they’re not what I’m talking about. I know good people who don’t have much of an SOH. They just take things too seriously: life, themselves. Everything is a potential source of grievance, and it’s exhausting.

Having a SOH is mainly a matter of seeing the ridiculous side of life, of reacting with laconic good humour when the chips are down, of reacting to a crisis with calm. There is a time to panic, but not as often as many people think.

Steadfastness, sex appeal, sense of humour. My criteria for enduring love.

Comments

[Linda W]

Wow! The "Three S's" are (or at least, were) the indicators of bipolar disorder aka manic depression: Sleep, Shopping and Sex. Not getting enough of the first and too much wanting and maybe experiencing the second and third. But your new "Three S's" are 'spot on' for love that lasts: Steadiness, Sex appeal and Sense of humour. It's a pity it took till I was 60 to figure that out. But God gives us many chances and, now almost 65, have all that and more in a great marriage. Spread the word, CBM!