Remain faithful. Dr. Finnegan Alford-Cooper studied 576 couples who had been married for 50 years or more; in 1998, she released her findings in the book
For Keeps: Marriages that Last a Lifetime. In her study, she found that 95 percent of the spouses agreed that fidelity was essential to a successful marriage, and 94 percent agreed or strongly agreed that marriage is a long-term commitment to one person. And these "lifers" weren't making the best of a bad lot: a whopping 90 percent of the couples she surveyed said that they were happily married after 50-plus years.
