F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the Great Gatsby and elsewhere created a fictional poet, Thomas Park D’Invellieres, who wrote:

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce high for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"

When I read that in high school, I thought how true! Looking back, I think “What nonsense!,” and suspect that Fitzgerald meant it as the path to a doomed relationship as well.

I think for a marriage to work both people have to be comfortable and accept the other person as they are. My first marriage did not work out. I married young at 23. From my point of view I tried to do everything I could to make my first wife happy, trying to somehow reinvent myself into the man I thought she wanted me to be. By the time I was 30 I was miserable, and so was she. So I left.

I decided that I would stop trying to change myself, something I had done with every girl/woman I had ever been close to up to that point in my life.

Found another gal and after we hit it off I told her, "Look,what you see is what you get. I ain't changin'. Been there and done that and it does not work for me. So though I love you dearly, if you don't like the way I am you'd best leave me." She said, "Okay. I understand. I love you just like you are." She stayed, and I am very happy in my second marriage, now some 20 years in, and so is she. We do not know any other couples as close as we are.

And you know, the funny thing? Without any conscious thought on my part, she has changed me in many ways for the better.

I also believe that all successful marriages are unique: Who the heck knows why some couples succeed while others do not? It is a very individual thing, how two people match up. Often I will think "What does he see in her" or vice versa. At other times I will be surprised that a seemingly perfect couple is separating after many years. For whatever reason, some folks just click, and others do not.. Other people's marriages are a mystery to me, and I imagine mine is to them as well.