You Said It: How Do You Keep A Marriage Together?

Even if you don’t have a secret love child like a certain former California governor, keeping your marriage together over the long haul can be tough.

“Let me put it this way, you get a bit more intolerant when you get older, I think,” said Sandrina Jackson, from Cumbria, England, who was  visiting her son, Douglas Jackson, in Catonsville.

Sandrina Jackson has been married 51 years and said the keys for couples are knowing each other and learning to agree on things in order to live together peacefully.

Some studies suggest that is more difficult than one might think.

The divorce rate among Americans over 50 doubled between 1990 and 2008, according to a studyby Dr. Susan Brown of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH.

According to Brown’s study, more than 25 percent of divorces were between people over the age of 50 in 2008. In 1990, less than 10 percent of divorces were between couples over the age of 50.

A study conducted for the AARP magazine in 2004 predicted such a rise as the baby boomers continued to age. The magazine called the trend "gray divorce," and one of the most notable in recent years was that of former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper. Of course, more recently, there was the announced separation of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver.

We asked folks around the region what they thought it would take to prevent a marriage from souring as the years went by. We caught their thoughtful, and somtimes humorous, responses on video.

Tell us what you think the key to longevity is in marriage in the comments

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