By Herbert Hadad

Don't ask me to explain it, because I can't. But men are more truthful fifteen miles out at sea with an endless sky above and ninety feet of water below.

Malcolm and I are off the coast of Hull, Massachusetts. During a lull in the fishing, I turn to him as he stands at the boat's helm and ask, "Do you still love your wife?" I look away rather than at him, a little embarrassed by my boldness and the intimacy of the inquiry.

Ten seconds later, he says yes. Then he decides to camouflage his feelings with humorous swagger: "And I'll continue to love Bernadette as long as she has a job. Even if she loves her horse more than me." He calls it her "hoss." We both laugh. He doesn't ask about me. The subject is closed.

I wonder why we treat discussions of love and marriage so frivolously. Why those of us who remember Rodney Dangerfield and Henny Youngman ("Take my wife? - please!") found them so hilarious. In my eyes, my wife both enters and emerges from a beauty parlor beautiful, yet I still can't resist saying, "You were in there three hours, and that was just for the estimate."

On the Web, you'll find this joke repeated in dozens of blogs as if newly minted each time. "What are the secrets of a successful marriage? 1. It is important to find a woman who cooks and cleans. 2. It is important to find a woman who makes good money. 3. It is important to find a woman who likes to have sex. 4. It is important that these three women never meet."

I know we laugh about what we cannot understand, and so much about marriage is a big mystery. How does a couple manage to stay together, when everything seems to conspire against them? Ask a cynic: He'll tell you people can't stand the sight of a happy marriage, and will do whatever they can to break one up.

Thinking back on the more than thirty years of my marriage to Evelyn, I conclude a successful union is a matter of profound good luck, even a series of miracles.

Once a year or so, Evelyn and I run into Howard Rubenstein, a public relations executive so well connected that when he threw himself a birthday party, the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York State showed up, and the New York Times covered it. Our last sighting was at a Christmas party given by the FBI in a Park Avenue office tower. I raced over and shook Rubenstein's hand and thanked him for giving me Evelyn. He looked mystified.

Here's the story. Years ago, I worked at the Rubenstein firm. The office manager there was pretty and kind and seemed to signal with a small smile that I wasn't exactly a Cyclops. In my bungling manner, I asked her out.

"You seem really nice," Evelyn said. "You come to work early and take work seriously. But, no, thank you. If it didn't work out between us, it would be awfully awkward to be in the same office."

Within the week, Mr. Rubenstein sent his vice president to see me. Looking uncomfortable, he said, "I know this is crazy, but Howard says you're fired." I was stunned. I'd never been fired.

Ten minutes later, I had a wait-a-second thought and ran down the hall. "Evelyn," I said, "I don't work here anymore. Will you go out with me?"

Not every marriage is blessed with healthy, bright, good-looking children, and not every marriage needs them. But Evelyn and I consider the arrival and development of Edward Salim, Charles Aram, and Sara Jameela monumentally generous gifts, miracles in themselves.

When we decided to marry and have a family, I must have been worried about domestic authority. I'd come from an upbringing in which the mother seemed to have total power. So did Evelyn. One day, I asked her, "When it comes to making decisions in our household, would it be okay if I had fifty-one percent of the vote and you had forty-nine?" She blithely agreed.

In fact, the percentages worked out differently. I give her one hundred percent when it's important to her, and she's accorded the same to me.

I have to tell you about another contract, known as the Famous Coupon, prompted by a story Evelyn and I heard about an old friend of ours. Our friend had had a secret mistress. After his death, she came to visit us with the daughter they'd had together. "He married me at his bedside two weeks before he died," the woman told us.

Evelyn was touched by the story and afterward said to me, "I would forgive you if you had an affair. I would give you one coupon. If you kept having affairs, I would leave. But I would understand if it happened once."

Thus was created the Famous Coupon. When I told my friend Myles about it, he laughed and said, "You don't know how brilliant your wife is. You will spend the rest of your life holding on to that coupon, because no one is going to be good enough."

Myles is wise in love. We were together recently, and I noticed a note he left for his Norwegian-born wife was signed "JED." I asked him what the letters meant.

"Jeg elsker deg," he said. "Norwegian for "'I love you.'"

Some people dismiss lustful love as a force that flares in your teens and twenties, then more or less burns itself out. I don't agree. It is lust that lasts. We continue to know it throughout our lives.

No less a personage than American poet laureate Donald Hall has written about the physical love he and his wife felt for each other after they were no longer young. Sometimes, it's as simple as sharing a mutual laugh. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night to find that Evelyn and I are holding hands. How lucky I am.

As I was considering the various components of love and marriage, Evelyn said to me, "You haven't asked me what makes a successful marriage. For me, it's that you have a fine mind, and a good heart, and a sense of humor. And you have a sensual side I find attractive."

I know all of Evelyn's flattery is too good to be completely true.

What's a downside for her in our relationship? I asked. Evelyn said whenever I get angry or annoyed, it's immediately detectable in my voice, which upsets her. "I don't like your tone when you're not happy," she said. "And in thirty-five years I haven't taught you to improve it."

Recently, while dining with a couple we met before we were parents, I asked them what they thought makes a marriage work. Bill said, "Marry the right woman. It's very difficult for two people to live together indefinitely in peace and harmony. You have to give the other person space."

Nancy said, "Nobody's wrong. We're both right. Write that down."

I also asked Eva, a work friend who's been married for more than forty years. "Good communication is important," she said. "And you have to be very flexible. People change over the years. Not everyone wants to hold hands and sit in the park. But it's communication. When it goes bad, your relationship is over. Kiss it good-bye."

One more exchange lingers with me. Evelyn and I are driving home from our visit with Malcolm and Bernadette. I'm lazily gazing up at the bridges over the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, each one different from the last. Evelyn's at the wheel. I ask if she'd like some music. I turn the radio on and get lucky. It's NPR broadcasting a Beethoven piano concerto.

We listen for three or four bridges. Then I say, "My deep and abiding sense of fairness compels me to ask if you'd like to listen to something else." She says yes. I knew she would. She likes pop music when she drives. I find her some Fleetwood Mac.

Another three or four bridges toward home, she says, "That was good. Now I'd like you to change it back."

This game of musical dial means nothing, and it means everything. It's a form of love. It's part of the miracle. Don't ask me to explain it, because I can't.

Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate and award-winning writer, says "uxorious" is not a dirty word.