100-Year Marriage

I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. Since 1997, I've been coaching powerful, purpose driven, world changing leaders who are ambitious.

In every area of their lives.

My Sex Love Power podcast and my YouTube channel are the go to resources for couples and individuals who want the vision of love they see in their hearts to manifest every day in the ways they collaborate, communicate love, and make love.

Let's go. Kurt and I have been married for almost 23 years and we're planning on another 50 to 75 together. We think in terms of taking care of our bodies, minds and spirits such that given the way technology is going, the way that the latest science of aging is working, and the ways that we are leveraging that we could each live to be well over a hundred, which gives us an amazingly long time to grow in love together and to contribute in so many other parts of our lives. So today's podcast episode is about how we think about that and how you could think about it too. So for shorthand, I call this the Hundred Year Marriage.

Now, is that literally what we're going.

For, being married for a hundred years? Not necessarily. But what would it be like to imagine that a marriage that's 50 or 60 years, which, you know, when I was growing up, that was sort of what I thought of as a really successful marriage. Golden anniversary, a silver anniversary, a platinum anniversary. And I was really proud that my grandparents had marriages that long. And given the societal pressures they faced, the ways that they created that kind of longevity in marriage are very different than the ways I intend to create longevity in mine. But they are an inspiration nonetheless. And today I want to help you start to think about, start to plan for that kind of marriage, whether that's living to be 90 together or 120 like we're aiming for, or even longer? What would it be like to be married that long? And I really love this question because it really begs you to look at, do you want that? Can you imagine relating to this person in the way that you have been for another 10, 20, 30, 40 years? Or would something need to change? Another question that arises is, are you picturing the coming decades as a process of deterioration? And when I say you could live to be 120, do you picture the last 40 or even 50 years of that being in a state of decrepitude, ever increasingly full of pain and unable.

To get around and take care of yourself?

Do you picture being grumpier and bickering with your partner? Or do you imagine, as I do, having more and more wisdom, more and more capacity to serve others, even if it is perhaps at a slower pace.

Than I had in my 30s or 40s or 50s.

But being able to be the kind of patient, gentle mentor to my grandchildren and great grandchildren even, that I haven't necessarily been able to be in the peak of my career to my children. It's been my experience that my grandparents were better grandparents to me than they were parents to my parents. My parents were wonderful parents and I love watching them with my kids, the time and the resources that they have available and the wisdom they've gained. But they just didn't have time to impart on me and they didn't have as much wealth and they didn't have the wisdom that they've gathered in the intervening years. So it's really cool to think about the kinds of relationships we can create as we get older and the kind of intimacy that we can create with our partners is of course the central theme of this podcast and my invitation to you as you think about the possibility of a hundred year marriage. So I want start by thinking in terms of planning. What would you need to do if you planned to live to be 120 and to have the partnership that you're in today just getting deeper and deeper over that time? What do you see coming down the pike in the next one decade? 2, 3, 4? How are you taking care of your dental health? How are you taking care of your hearts? How are you addressing inflammation? How are you looking at your blood sugar? What are you doing to ensure that you don't have any micronutrient gaps? Do you look at your blood work? How often are you putting things into your system that you know are shortening your life? But they're crutches, they're compulsive things you rely on to regulate yourself, to comfort yourself throughout the day. I know I've cleaned up my habits, replacing sugar and flour with meditation, eating lots of fruits and vegetables every day, watching what kinds of protein I get, and perpetually upgrading the quality of my proteins and of my fats. So my diet's really pristine. But I noticed there was a particular tea that I was reaching for again and again to have a little pick me up at the end of the day. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the kind of life I want to live involves consciousness and relying on my source, my spiritual strength, my wider consciousness, rather than rely on a substance because it's easy to leap from one to another and to always be trying to escape the moment is the nature of I Think it's human nature, but in particular I have a tendency to want to do that. So I swapped that out for a variety of other teas and for just sitting with myself quietly and checking out what's going on with me. So those kinds of refinements to our self care, to our wellbeing practices are the kind of thing that can continue to extend your life and your love. But I invite you to start to plan for your evolution as you start to think forward. Think about those kinds of health practices. What would it take to live a long time? And then what would you do with each other in terms of communication, in terms of sexual connection, in terms of your living situation? The ways that you create a home and a place where you welcome other people, A place for community. We call this the house that love built. What would you want to have be.

Different if you knew you were gonna.

Live a long, long time? How would you invest? And then start to make a plan, Start to anticipate the changes in your life over time and the major milestones. It's awful to think about losing our parents if we haven't yet. And obviously there's grief if we have. I was lucky enough to have four parents and three of them are still living, so I know both of those stories. So thinking about the kinds of things.

That you're going to encounter, you may.

Have elder care that will be a part of your life coming up. There may be kids who are at home now, who will be in college or doing their launch, whatever that winds up looking like. And then there'll be adults. And then you may want to think about where do you want to be when they have kids. Kurt and I think about that and think in terms of moving wherever they are.

You know, we wouldn't want to control our kids lives. Like you have to live here, so.

You'Re close to us. But we sure also want to be a part of our grandkids lives, so we'll be the ones to flex, to move where they are and perhaps divide our time if our children aren't living.

In the same place as each other.

And they both have kids and want us near. So ask yourself some of those kinds of planning questions and what are the issues or the patterns that between you and your partner could get untangled if you knew you had the time for it and that you're going to get to amortize the benefits over more decades. A lot of people plan to retire sometime in their 50s or 60s because they only expect to live to be 80 and because they expect their health to deteriorate.

But a lot of the brightest people.

I know today have both found work they love so much.

They don't ever really want to fully give it up.

And they're confident that they're going to have the energy and the vitality to continue doing that work, maybe not forever, but for longer than, say, my grandparents did. So think about a timeline in terms of how long would you want to.

Work if you got to do what.

You really want to do and if you felt great? And how would that change your financial picture? How would that change the picture of where you're going to live and how you and your partner are going to craft your day to day life during those years or decades? Think about a new timeline that envisions further than you might have in the past. When would you want to retire, and how much money would you want to have when you retired? Or what kinds of income streams would you want to cultivate so that you could maybe work less and so that you could live longer knowing that you were financially secure? Begin to create a timeline that includes the important milestones of the people around you. Arrange when you expect to need to take care of your parents or really want to spend time with them late in their lives. Imagine the times when your kids are going to be at home with you, when they're going to need some support because they're fledgling, and when they're going to need less time from you. And then perhaps again when they're going to have children and put on your timeline what you'd like to be working at or playing at, where in the world you'd like to be.

And then there'll be other key events that you want to put into your timeline, often financial milestones. So, you know, planning in for, say, marriages of children or times when you might want to contribute to them. Buying a home or them investing in a business, paying for college, those kinds of things. You know what's going to be happening on your financial horizon. And then do you have a plan for retirement? You know, there's a lot with Social Security, there are incentives to work to certain ages, and there may be things with your company or whatever you're up to where you think about changes in income. But the other thing is if you start to think about having a longer health span, then the notion of retiring at 65 and becoming significantly more idle doesn't make nearly as much sense. The work that I do, I want to do as long as I can, which I'm working to have that be A very long time. So at age 49, I may be just a third or half or less of the way through my career right now. So how do you think about that? Is your work something you want to give up or something that you see just growing and expanding over time? Perhaps more publication, more publicly delivered works? Maybe you want to start a whole new skill set, a whole new certification, a whole new degree. Now, if you knew that you had 50 years of work ahead of you, of course, it might make sense to get another degree to study something different than what you did the first time, or to go deeper into what you already know. And I find that very exciting. You may have inheritance that you anticipate, and I think it's really prudent not to build that into the essentials part of your plan, but to think of it more like, yeah, this is money that we'll have to do extra things possibly, you know, if it happens, or money that we'll have to pass down to our children or to use for philanthropy. But, you know, what do you see happening? When will your mortgage be paid off? When will your overall expenses change in various ways? And, you know, healthcare expenses, it's easy to anticipate that those may go up over time, especially if you've been employed at a company with significant healthcare benefits and you're not going to be employed anymore at some point. What changes with that? So thinking through all of these financial milestones, and then what's on your bucket list? What do you most want to do with this life? So this brings me to some of the other resources that have meant the most to me. This particular book by Dave Ellis, Creating youg Future. I don't even know how long ago I first read it. It was published in 1998. Dave has a wonderful way of having you think on a very long time frame, like, what's the 500 year impact of your life? What ripples do you want to send out that will extend past your lifetime? I just love that vision. What can you work toward that is bigger than you, that will certainly outlive you and will take longer to accomplish than you may have on this earth? I think it's beautiful to have a vision at that level. This is another book that has you thinking about your impact.

Life in full.

The subtitle is A Baby Boomer. Boomer's Guide to At least the next 20 years. I am not a Baby Boomer. I know.

I'm not a millennial either. I'm right in the middle.

I'm a Gen Xer. And this book is just it says maximizing your longevity and legacy. So it's for couples and thinking about, not exclusively for couples, but written by a couple. Ask yourself, how long do I want to live? Who do I want to spend those years with? How do I want to look and feel? How much money will I need? What do I want to start doing? And what do I want to stop doing? What higher power do I believe in? They say, which God do I believe in and which self will I be?

What?

And more importantly, who will be my legacy? So those kinds of questions are really useful and I draw from their wisdom. This book is really wonderful. The Hundred Year Life for it sort of expanded my horizons. About the subtitle is Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. About the implications that I hadn't thought of. Of what if you did live to be 100 or 150 or somewhere in between in good health? What changes? What becomes possible? What becomes necessary? So you can read this for kind of some backup to help expand your thinking. And I think these are the things that become inflection points in our lives is moments when we have a figure ground shift in how we think about things. And I think a lot of people have just sort of assumed that they would have what their parents had, but the rate of change in the world is just going straight up. So things are not going to look for you like they did for your parents and especially your grandparents. And they won't look for your kids and their kids like they looked for you either. So we've got to become a little bit more fluid in how we think about these things so that we're prioritizing the things that will actually matter in the lifetimes that we have. Think about locations. Where do you want to live? What kinds of spaces do you want to live in? Do you want to travel? Do you want to stay put in one place? Do you want to have a couple of homes and be, you know, there's a phrase, snowbird here in the US like people who like to live in Seattle or Minneapolis or New York in the summer, and then in the winter go somewhere like Arizona or Florida where it's warmer. What kind of health and energy do you anticipate having? And is that how it needs to be? And is that how it will certainly be? And what if your health were significantly worse? And what if your health were significantly better than you've been anticipating? And what can you do to make it better? So from a health standpoint and well, being. Well, first I'll Talk about this book that's both about physical well being and financial well being. It's called Age Proof by Jim Chasky and Michael Roizen, both great authors. Gene Chowski on the money side and Michael Rosen, M.D. on the health side. So they're talking about living longer without running out of money or breaking a hip. You know, how to have a long life that is prosperous and have a long health span, not just lifespan. So that has some great information in it and inspiration. And then my favorite book about healthspan is Lifespan why We Age and why we don't have to by David Sinclair. So that's a phenomenal book, highly recommended. And then sort of derivative of that is Anthony Robbins and Pete Diamandis wrote along with Robert Hariri, M.D. this book life Force. So this is a good, like sort of summation amalgamation of a lot of the best things. Thinking right now on longevity. Increase your energy, strength, vitality, health span and power. And you know, Tony is always taking it to 11. It's gonna be intensity, but it's this kind of ambition that I'm, you know, he's looking great, taking good care of himself. And that's what I want to do is just be, you know, I'm letting my hair go gray but like hot and wildly alive as we just gracefully embrace being elders. But vibrant, joyful, powerful elders. And this book by Norman Anderson is also a great kind of primer on what really determines how long you live. Emotional longevity. So health and longevity is determined by emotions, thoughts and actions, personal achievement and equality, environment and relationships, faith and meaning and biology. So good guidance in here about how to move the levers on the things that determine how long and how well you live. So getting really deliberate about that. And then a book that I'm really excited to see come out. It's coming out in a couple months from the time I'm recording. This is called Outlive by Peter Attia. So he's doing a lot of great thinking and writing about longevity. And then Kelly Stone Starrett is about flexibility and physical mobility and ability. And he's got a new book coming out called Built to Move. So excited to see that. And then a couple other resources I want to mention are the book My Plan for living to 156. It's kind of a booklet by Dan Sullivan and you can find that on Amazon. We'll include links to all of these in the show notes. But that's another one of the documents that has helped change my thinking about how long I'm going to live. And how I want to think about my marriage and my work and my life and my money and my wellness inside that kind of ambition. And then the game Cash Flow by Robert Kiyosaki, who is the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It's a great way to train your brain and your kids brains to think in terms of revenue producing assets rather than a job. And having to think in terms of exerting your energy by the hour in order to earn money, but letting money work for you instead. So that's another whole piece to all of this is like being able to enjoy a long life and to use earned income to create assets that then will earn income for you. So some of the other questions I ask clients and I invite you to ask yourself what skills do you want to grow if you have decades and decades ahead of you and you know that you can learn anything you want to learn and you can become anything you want to become. Do you want to get good at the guitar? Do you want to learn how to surf? Do you want to get a master's degree in French literature? You know what is fascinating to you? What would delight you to spend time on invest time into? What contribution do you really want to make? I think a lot of people feel really helpless around the problems that really break their hearts. And I won't even name problems because I don't want to be divisive. But whatever it is that you want to have be different in the world, think about if you had 20, 30, 40 hours a week to put into it and you had a couple decades to really buckle down around it, how much difference could you personally make? How many other people could you awaken around that cause?

And there's a book about this that's really inspiring me a lot by one.

Of my mentors, Lynn Twist, living a committed life. And Lynn has worked with the Hunger Project and the Pachamama alliance to do phenomenal things with her life. And she's really showing me finding freedom and fulfillment in a purpose larger than yourself. Like how we can tether ourselves, lash ourselves to the mast of something bigger that we know that we can't single handedly change. But that is worth dedicating ourselves to and calling others forward around. And then let's think about people in your life. What do the closest people in your life support in you? What do you want to be backed up on? What do you want help with and support with? And what do you want to support others in, particularly your partner? What are the dreams of theirs that you want to get behind. And what dreams of yours do you want to feel like they've really got your back on? And then are there other people who you're committed to caring for? I mentioned earlier the adventure of grandchildren and that's something we aspire to later but obviously don't have any control over. But the other commitment that we have is to be there for our parents. And I've watched my mom take exquisite care of her parents and then in recent years her mom. And we're only about 15 months out from my, the loss of my grandma. And she meant the world to me and to my mom. And it's wonderful to take in the recognition that my mom showed me how it's done, how even though they lived several states apart and that wasn't going to change, she was there for her every day in ways that worked in my mom's life. She was loving toward her mom and supportive of so many of the things that her mom needed. So I want to be that way for my parents and my mother in law. And so looking at, you know, how do you dedicate energy to that? And then are there grandchildren, do you have siblings? And of course your own children, if you have them, who do you want to support and how in what ways over the coming years, as for you and your partner, do you have separate dreams? Like my husband loves fishing and hunting and a lot of kind of roughing it. Things that I'm not as into. I love being in wilderness and we have done things like go to Kodiak island and go out and spend a week definitely camping and backpacking on a grizzly bear safari, which was terrifying.

Yes.

But you know, it was one of the most magical times of my life. But I wouldn't have chosen on my own to go do that. And he wants to go back into the Alaskan wilderness for, you know, probably a 10 day, ish whitewater trip next summer. And I don't need to go do that with him. So that's one of the dreams of his that I am supportive of. And he's supportive of some of my dreams, like spiritual pilgrimages to places like Egypt and the south of France, where Mary Magdalene is said to have gone after the crucifixion. And my passions are just a little different than his on some things. And then we go places together. We went to the south of France together last summer. And so which things are you going to pursue separately? And which things are going to pursue together? And are there dreams that need more space, space than they've gotten? And do you have dreams that necessitate a change in your lifestyle that really would mean that you need to do things very differently or live somewhere completely different. Who will you need to become as a person and as a couple in order to carry out your real vision? I think a lot of people just blind themselves to, you know, put on blinders like you put on a horse that to not let themselves look at what they really want because it does threaten so much of the status quo. But in fact, the status quo is often not really worth protecting in that way, especially not at the cost of our real visions. I believe that those visions are marching orders written on our hearts by the divine. They're what we've been asked to do in this lifetime. They are how we contribute. So looking for what you need to put on the altar. Sacrifice means to make sacred hear the root there. Sacred sacrifice. If you will put the status quo on the altar, you make it sacred by giving it up in favor of something juicier, wilder, more free, more real. So what is it that you need to become and what do you need to give up in order for that? What are the key values that are driving your vision? And then what, by contrast to the vision are you pursuing right now that doesn't match? What are you doing that gets in the way of it? Where are you wasting time? Where do you waste money? Where do you waste life energy? The prevailing current of our culture is very oriented around meaningless consumption and over consumption of alcohol and food and plastic and stuff. And it's really a very sage conscious person who doesn't engage in any of that. You know, we have to stay awake all the time to notice. Where am I? Just getting caught up in the current of shopping and buying and accumulating and consuming and indulging and what is it that I really want and how will I refine my choices to dedicate more energy toward that which I truly desire? Where are you living as if your relationship doesn't really matter? Where are you living as if you will both live forever, as if you've got all the time in the world to work things out between the two of you? I know we've all heard stories about a couple that bickered in the morning and then one of them was in an accident. They thought they had all the time in the world and they didn't. So I try with both my husband and my children and my parents to say goodbye every time as if it might well be the last. I want it to be something I can remember with integrity and joy. That I was all there the last time I saw them, no matter which time that is. And maybe that sounds morbid, but I think it keeps me in the present and really alive. And then where are you living? As if your money doesn't matter. In what ways are you living? As if your health doesn't matter, as if your health is just a matter of luck. You can take it for granted or you can take for granted that it's going to deteriorate no matter what you do. Because none of those things are true. We have exactly the bodies that we have created through our behaviors. And of course we all have genetic predispositions and tendencies. And we are our size and shape and genes in so many ways. And yet with what we have, most of us have the potential to have really long, long, really well lives. And even if there are constraints on our physical vitality, we have the potential to make the most of what we've got. Even if we have. And I certainly have some neurodivergence that creates adventures in my experience. And each of those adventures creates a deepening of my connection to the divine and the. The potential that my life shows me for mindfulness and being deliberate and being that much more disciplined and refined. And I think there's light and beauty in that. It's not just hassle or problem or constraint. It's blessing. I get to attend to my add brain to my addict brain and the ways that my body is set, sensitive to flour and sugar and quantities of food and bright light and textures and loud noises and things. I get to work with that instead of against it or feeling like I'm toiling under the weight of it. So those are the questions that I wanted to ask you today. And I hope that some of the resources that I've shared expand your mind the way that they have expanded mine. And I would love to hear hear from you what comes up as I talk about a hundred year marriage. You know, a lot of people, if they're having a mediocre marriage right now, they think, I don't want this to last any longer than it has to. But that marriage isn't the one that you need to have for the next 75 or 45 or however many years to get to 100, you get to have any marriage you're up for creating. So that's what I love to do, is help people create the marriages they really deserve with the kind of sweetness and heat and joy that lights them up, that spills over from the two of them into the rest of each of their lives, the work they do, the other people in their families and the communities and the world around them. I think that love can be a fountain that nourishes everything around it, you know, an oasis that creates a lot of aliveness, spreading out and out and out from that one couple. So that's what I want for you, that kind of legacy love. That's what I'm devoted to creating for myself and to supporting every client with. And I hope that through this podcast episode and all the others, you're given just a few more pieces of the puzzle to help you create the kind of love that you really desire. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you're going to take away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? Drop me a DM on social media anytime. Links are in the show notes. You know, reviews are really what help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thanks in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app before you move on with your day. And hey, have you subscribed? Hit that subscribe button in the app so you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Michelle Isenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.