Not all long-term marriages are satisfying for both spouses and those who stay in an unhappy marriage do so for a variety of reasons. The data reported from the studies of long-term marriages outlined below underline the active nature of the process of creating and maintaining a satisfying marriage over long periods. The studies included in this paper were conducted across the early 1980s and the 1990s and involve predominantly qualitative analyses. Despite the fact that qualitative research is often criticised for being 'soft' (Neuman 1997), it is the capacity to capture the meaning attached to aspects of human and social life that makes qualitative research appropriate and useful for exploring couple relationships.