Long-term commitments like marriage require effort to uphold. It isn’t always easy sailing; occasionally, you have to put in some effort to strengthen your bond.
In the end, this can pay off by guaranteeing that two people experience feelings of joy, love, stability, and fulfillment throughout their adult lives.
The expertise of Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband Christopher Guest on this subject is undeniable. They have been together for a remarkable 37 years and are a couple to which we can all aspire.
But it’s not only about sticking together that counts. The most crucial thing is to be happy together, and these two seem to know exactly what is required to do so.
Love at First ‘Sight’ In 1984, Curtis ‘met’ Guest for the first time after seeing a picture of the fictitious English Spinal Trap singer in Rolling Stone.
She told her friend Debra Hill, the producer and co-writer of Halloween, where they were seated, right away, that she was going to marry him.
I had recently ended a relationship and bought a stunning apartment in Los Angeles when I was 25 years old and felt cautiously enthusiastic about life.
When I decided to take financial and personal risks to achieve complete independence, I felt as though I had actually voted for myself, Curtis remarked.
As it turned out, that acquaintance was familiar with Guest’s agency and told Curtis about it. The latter was naturally ecstatic.
Curtis called Guest’s agent after Hill gave him Curtis’ number. Guest never called back after she left a message asking him to ask Guest to call her.
At this point, it was only a little setback, and Curtis went on. I continued living my life, she added. I started dating a nice guy, but we both realized it wasn’t going to last.
Another ‘Meeting’
One day, she dropped that guy off at the airport, and they exchanged a fond but tearful farewell. Then Curtis took her to Hugo’s in West Hollywood, where she was going to have dinner with several friends.
She narrates what happened that evening:
I looked up as I sat down at Hugo’s and noticed that I was looking directly at Chris, who was sitting three tables away.
I’m the guy you phoned, he appeared to be saying as he waved at me. ‘I’m the woman who called you,’ I waved in response.
He stood up to leave a short while later. He raised up his hand and shrugged while standing 20 feet away, seemingly saying, ‘I’ll see you. On June 28, the day after, Guest phoned her.
On July 2, they made plans to meet at the Chianti Ristorante on Melrose for their very first date.
They had an instant and genuine connection. We had already fallen in love by August 8, when he left for New York City to film a year of Saturday Night Live, according to Curtis.
They were talking over the phone a few days later, and Guest was in New York. Suddenly, he asked her, ‘Do you like diamonds?’
Just four months after their first date, on December 18, 1984, the deeply in love couple exchanged vows in a small, low-key ceremony at This Is Spinal Tap filmmaker Rob Reiner’s home.
Curtis admitted after seven years of marriage, ‘I don’t think we have an easy marriage. Our marriage is challenging but successful.
Two Turn into Four
The couple suffered with infertility after getting married, and two years later they decided to adopt a baby girl. Soon after Annie was born in 1986, they adopted her.
The newlyweds had a good experience with the procedure, which included getting to know and get along well with Annie’s birth mother.
The family unit between Curtis and Guest felt firmly established as three instead of two.
‘With a spouse and a child, my life is this blend of being wild and carefree, and on another level meticulous and cautious,’ Curtis said to People in 1994. Although strange, I’m very pleased.’
However, it turned out that they weren’t quite finished. Nine years later, Curtis and Guest made the ‘celestial’ decision to adopt a second child.
Their spontaneous choice to expand their three-person family to four people resulted from coincidental events. After a friend of Curtis’s passed away in 1996, they were privileged to become the parents of Ruby just four days later.
Ruby, who is now better known as Thomas, is a 25-year-old transgender person who came out in 2021. Her son’s transition has received full support from Curtis, who has been extremely open about it.
A Soulmate
Like everyone else, Curtis struggled. The famously contentious divorce of her parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, occurred when she was barely 3 years old in 1962.
Curtis continued to feel self-conscious about her ‘dull-looking’ teeth when she first met Guest.
Curtis acknowledged, ‘I never smiled for a very long time because I was self-conscious about my unsightly, dull-looking teeth.
Because of this, I started to smirk, and when I looked at Chris’s smirk in the photo, I essentially recognized myself. I noticed a similar spirit.’
When she first saw his picture, she ‘felt we’d understand each other,’ according to Curtis. I believe there was a small secret that only I knew that was concealed in that smirk, she continued. Additionally, the two have a similar odd sense of humor that they both get.
Greater Together
They both find comfort in the stability of their long-term relationship, and they are allegedly quite appreciative of it.
I feel safe when I drive up and see that you are home, Jamie wrote in a romantic song for her husband on their 35th wedding anniversary.
Indeed, the 63-year-old claims that Guest is her ‘one and only’ and that she considers herself a ‘deep, serious romantic.’
The ups and downs of each new relationship follow the initial pleasure and enthusiasm. The actual romance of marriage is when partners go through unexpected situations and the reality of living together.
The secret, according to Curtis, who describes herself as both a romantic and a realist, is to value the simple things like this.
Although she has a realistic perspective on marriage, Curtis continues, she fully values the comfort and protection that marriage provides her more than any grand, romantic gesture.
But how can she account for their continued success? ‘Don’t leave” is the best advise, which can be summed up in two words.
When describing marriage, Curtis uses the idiom ‘Stay on the bus… the landscape will change.’
She thinks it’s crucial to keep in mind that any unhappy or challenging situations will pass, so the idea is to just ‘stick on for the ride.’
You may be having a rough week, but Curtis advised staying on the bus because one day you’ll gaze out the window and it will be gorgeous.