What's the secret to a happy marriage?

[Courtesy Flush]

A friend just sent me a joke on this subject (not funny enough to bother posting here), but it got me thinking.

What is the secret of a happy marriage? First I'll tell you where I am coming from. I've been married for 23 years, and this morning when the alarm clock sounded my wife and I snuggled tightly until the snooze alarm sounded, then went through two more cycles all snuggled up. This is what we do every single morning and it's been that way since we were in our twenties.

No, that's not the secret. I'm just saying that I've got one of those happy marriages, and I still couldn't answer the question if anyone asked me the secret.

The best answer I can give is that both people have to want it to work. Fidelity is also important, but maybe not a deal breaker in all marriages (I think infidelity would cause a severe blow to our marriage, but I'm not willing to find out). Trust is a biggie for us. I hand over all my paychecks to my wife, and never give it another thought. I trust her with money more than I trust myself. I feel like everything my wife does takes my best interests into account. I try to be the same way with her, but she's better at it than I am. Don't get the wrong impression. She's no doting housewife. She has advanced degrees, and has always made more money that I, so she'd do fine without me. She's a take-charge woman who knows how to keep me in line (yes, I get teased by other guys, but I get my way about as often as she does).

I should note that we never had kids. That can add an extra thirty years to any honeymoon, but there are people with plenty of kids, and as happy as we are, so that's certainly not the secret.

Maybe it's stupid to try to generalize. Maybe the secret to one marriage is not right for another. Surely there's got to be one common thread out there. What makes your marriage work?

EDIT: What I'm really trying to say is that there are thousands of marriages that are nothing like mine, and arrangements that would never work in my house, yet they're happy and stay married. It's the lack of a common factor that I'm asking about.