Published: February 01, 2008 09:07 am            

LITTLE LOVE STORES: Five couples talk about their lives

Do experts really know why some couples have solid, life-enhancing relationships and others simply can’t seem to make their lives together work?

“There really aren’t any universal guidelines,” said Linda Bloom, a relationship therapist who, with her husband, authored “101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married.”

Bloom, during a telephone interview from her home in Santa Cruz, Calif., said her own relationship was like on-the-job training for her and her husband, Charlie, who is also a relationship therapist. The Blooms were married just out of their teens. “There was a lot we didn’t know when we got married, and we had to learn the hard way,” she said.

The book came from decades of learning, counseling and teaching. “We narrowed it down to the 101 things we thought were really essential,” she said.

The book seems to help readers examine and invigorate their relationships, she said.

“People get into habits, sometimes start taking each other for granted and sometimes getting a little bit bored,” she said. “I’ve heard from a lot of people that they like to take the book out and pick out one or two points as a jump start for communication.”

Inspired by “101 Things,” Niagara Living recently interviewed a handful of couples in the Niagara region who were recommended by friends or family members as “well married.”

During interviews with each couple, there were two aspects shared by all. Each exhibited a strong fondness for their partner, and all had living spaces adorned with family photos, indicating that more than two lives are touched when a relationship is well lived.

As the couples share their stories on these pages, its easy to see that their experiences mirror aspects of the book. For those who would like further inspiration, some thoughts from “101 Things,” are listed at right.

To have somebody believe in you with conviction transforms your identity

When John Kolecki tells the story of his marriage proposal, involving bikes, clams and the Grand Island bridge, his wife Violet laughs outloud in delight at his words. When he talks about the historical novel he’s just written, his wife watches him intently, deeply interested in what he’s saying. She’s at his side when he goes out to promote his self-published books on area history, and prods him along if he should forget something wonderful he’s written. She is his best audience.

“My husband is a very hard-working person,” Violet said. “He’s always on the move, so I have to help him.”

She doesn’t like that John, 87, still gets on a ladder to clean the gutters of their North Tonawanda home. But, at 80, she’s right out there with him, raking the leaves and cleaning the yard of the home where they raised their three children. Sadly, they lost a daughter to ovarian cancer this past July, and the tears still come now and again, they said, but the tragedy seemed to make them stronger. They talk with delight of their two young grandchildren, recently adopted from Russia by their son.

John likes to say, “Someone upstairs must be on our side.”

True intimacy can exist onlybetween equals

Homer and Marie Hicks have been married a long time: 60 years this December. He jokes about how he stole her from her parents when she was 17, but you only have to meet Marie for a few minutes to be clear that nobody takes her anywhere she doesn’t want to go.

These days, the couple spends their time at the Schoellkopf Health Center in Niagara Falls, where Marie has been living for four years. Homer visits her every day, faithfully and sometimes as many as three times a day, while Marie works on getting back movement to her legs so she can go home.

When a friend asked Homer if was he still in love, he responded, “Well, that’s what I think they call it, L-O-V-E,” and then he giggled in delight.

During their marriage they raised two daughters while Homer was “Mr. Overtime,” at Union Carbide. He worked hard so that he could indulge his wife, and he quietly approved of the way she liked to dress in beautiful clothes. Marie also worked as a cook, but when Homer retired, she did as well. “If he eats beans, I eat beans,” she said, smiling at her explanation, which seemed after listening to their story, a theme for their life.

After retirement, the couple traveled the country visiting relatives. They can’t wait until Marie returns home and they can get back to their travels and their life together.

“My married life has been wonderful,” Marie said.

“Sometimes things went so smoothly,” Homer said, “it almost looked like we planned it.”

Creating a marriage is like launching a rocket; once it clears the pull of gravity, it takes much less energy to sustain the flight

Gene Olson knew the girl he was going to marry as soon as he laid eyes on her. They met at a wax company in Buffalo, the place that made red candy wax lips, and that might have been a tip-off that their love was going to work out great. In a story about their courtship Gene wrote the following:

“A beautiful honey-blonde young woman with a curvaceous figure entered the office from a left entrance door and glided regally across the room. She turned and fixed her big blue eyes upon me, nodded hello, and flashed her dazzling smile. I beamed and nodded back. She blushed and exited the other door.

“ ‘Wow! Who was that?’ I asked the secretary next to me. ‘That’s Agnes Danielson, our quality-control clerk,’ she replied. I smiled and gushed, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry!’ ”

After 56 years and the successful rearing of four sons, the Gene is still glad he followed his heart.

“One of the most important things that Agnes has done for me is that in times of sickness, reverses or trials, she would always say in a calm voice, ‘Don’t worry, God will take care of us, he always has and he always will.’ ”

Give what you want to receive

When describing Jerry and Navene Maragliano of Kenmore, a friend said that “you can just see that the two of them are happy together.” They sit close on the couch of their Kenmore home; her hand rests easily on his knee. The hallway of their home is a gallery for their combined heritage and pictures go all the way back to their great-grandparents.

They came from different backgrounds. Hers was a little more middle class, but she loved his desire to learn new things. They raised two daughters while he worked as a millwright. Things have not always been easy.

“When the occasion came up and I was out of work she would always find a job right away and I would think, ‘Wow, that’s terrific,’ ” Jerry said.

These days they spend a lot of time giving back to the community, volunteering for a number of groups from Friends of the Night People to Habitat for Humanity. Their strength might be in all they give to each other as well. She says he spoils her.

One of the greatest gestures of his love was when he received a settlement from work, and instead of spending it on himself, he bought her a diamond necklace. She could hardly bring herself to wear it. But, finally she did, understanding that it was what he wanted.

Jerry remembers his parents laughing together. Navene, too, has memories of her parents’ strong love. It could be what fortified them through the hard times.

“We came from parents who were married a long time,” Jerry said. “We just understood we would be married the rest of our lives.”

In order to thrive, love requires separateness as well as togetherness

Ken Haak goes canoeing in the wilderness to find his sense of peace. When his wife, Patti Jo, wants some quiet time, she sits in a small room in her Lockport home where she is surrounded by photos of her children and their ancestors. Great-grandparents, uncles and aunts peering out of photos more than a hundred years old help to remind her that it takes more than two people to make a family. It is a point on which she and her husband whole-heartedly agree.

They’ve been together since 1970, when they met at Lockport High School when she was a cheerleader and he was a basketball player. Since then, they raised two sons, Ken Jr. and Stephen, both now married. “We couldn’t have gotten better daughters-in-law if we had selected them ourselves,” Ken said.

The Haaks, both teachers in Barker, hope their sons learned about strong relationships from them, as they learned from their parents and extended family. Patti Jo had her parents to share counsel. Ken’s Lockport High School coaches provided strong support to him as mentors and friends. The couple knows that people learn and grow from the network of loving support that surrounds them.

The success of their love plays itself out in small moments, like watching their 2-year-old grandson on the basketball court, while their son, Ken, coaches with concepts he learned from his basketball coach father. Images of such moments are shared with her parents instantaneously through a cell phone camera, tightly connecting the generations.

Their lives are interwoven with the threads of family that connect them to their past and to their future.

“It’s the circle of life, playing out before us,” Patti Jo said, adding that families who weave strong bonds through the generations learn so much from each other. “You need strategies like that to get you through,” she said.

Contact editor Michele DeLuca at 693-1000, ext. 157.

        

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