We are soul mates in the sense that we can't do without each other and although two very different people share a lot of common interests. We didn't meet until we were in our mid to late forties, so we both had had other relationships before.
This perhaps explains part of the reason that we are willing and usually able to understand the other's point of view.
We do sometimes have flaming rows, but only about things that are really important and usually once we have both cooled down we manage to reach a solution. Sometimes one of us realizes he/she has been unreasonable and apologises, sometimes we reach a compromise.
Morgana, I think you have a valid point, I too think many marriages falter because it is more difficult being two equal parties than the older view of marriage, where the husband decided in many instances, and if the wife could not change his mind, she just had to put up with his decision. Not that I would want to live like that!
Probably many women put up with unreasonable husbands, because divorce wasn't an option if you could not support yourself. Many men too must have put up with unreasonable wives, after all it wasn't until 1969 in England and Wales and 1970 in Scotland that irretrievable breakdown of a marriage became grounds for a divorce. Before that in Scotland at least, a wife who left her husband could not get custody of their children unless she could prove the man she was divorcing was either insane or morally unfit to rear children. The fact that she left or even worse had committed adultery proved in the eyes of the law that she was not fit to bring up children, especially girls as she was held to have no moral standards!
We do have a lot to be thankful for.