6 tips for maintaining a strong bond with your partner through tough times, from a couple together for 41 years

• Bert Morton, 75, and Lee Korty, 65, have been together for 41 years and married since 2013.
• The couple shared advice on how to build a meaningful life and community together.

Creating a long-lasting, healthy relationship takes time and effort.

For Lee Korty and Bert Morton it started with more obstacles than most.

The pair met in Illinois in the early ‘80s and committed to each other shortly after. But the road to marriage wasn’t a smooth one before the US legalized same-sex marriage: the couple had a domestic parternship in Chicago, a civil union in Illinois, a marriage in Iowa in 2013, and, finally, a marriage in Illinois in 2015.

The domestic partnership made their life more complicated — from their tax filing process to their lack of hospital visitation rights — and they were one of 26 couples working with the ACLU and Lambda Legal to overturn Illinois’s law that stated marriage could only be between a man and a woman. (They eventually dropped the lawsuit once the federal government legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.)

“We were baffled by the fact that our loving each other would have any effect on anybody else, other than the fact that it also gave us love to share with our neighbors and our friends,” Morton told Business Insider.

Every relationship requires work to stay together, but sharing the same core values and sense of purpose in their activism is what Korty, 65, and Morton, 75, said makes their marriage so successful. Science backs this up: according to a 2022 study, couples who help each other reach their goals thrived together more.

“That's been a joy in our lives, and it's been a joy participating in getting that privilege of marriage,” Morton said.

Now married, the couple shared their tips for making a marriage or partnership entirely your own.

1. Be upfront about what you want

Korty and Morton spotted one another at a local Illinois gay bar in 1982. Each had asked the bartender about the other, gotten confirmation that the other man was “a good guy,” and they started seeing each other soon after.

Though they were in very different places in their lives, Morton was 33, had just left his marriage to a woman, and “was forced to face the reality of my life” as a gay man, he said. Korty, meanwhile, was 22 and a senior in college.

After about six months of on-and-off again dating, the two agreed to commit to each other when Morton was open about being older and wanting a long-term partner.

“If I wasn't interested, he wasn't going to wait around,” Korty said. “I knew a good deal when I saw one. So I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’”

2. Know your strengths

Korty and Morton both bring different strengths to their marriage. “I think part of the reason for our long-lasting relationship is that Bert and I are in different fields,” Korty said. Morton was employed at an architectural firm, while Korty worked in IT at IBM.

“We both came to the relationship with a strong sense of who we were, and we weren't looking for another person to take care of us,” Korty said. “We could stand on our own, but we could still come together and complement each other.”

Their teamwork came in handy at different points in their lives, such as when they built their house together. “Bert designed and built the house we're in, and we've done a lot of work on that,” Korty said. “If you can build a house together and can make it through that, then you've probably made it through the worst that you can do.”

3. Share the same core values

Activism plays a huge role in Morton and Korty’s relationship happiness. After the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ‘80s, the couple felt like there wasn’t much visibility in the LGBTQ+ community where they lived.

“We had not seen a whole lot of active community other than at the bars,” Morton said. “Lots of people continued to stay in the closet, but we just decided that we needed to be visible.”

Both are involved in local LGBTQ+ groups like the Coalition of Rainbow Alliances (CORAL). Korty offers free tax filing services, while Morton works in community-building and event coordination.

Morton said working together and seeing so much progress for LGBTQ+ rights since his 30s has positively impacted his marriage. “It's been a good life because of that, and I've been lucky to share it with Lee,” he said.

4. Invest in your community together

The US is currently enduring a loneliness epidemic, with some couples feeling isolated and unhappy within their marriages.

Korty and Morton’s antidote has been to invest in both close and casual friendships within their community. Morton landscaped about half of the houses in their area, “so we are well-liked and well-respected in our neighborhood,” Korty said.

Korty and Morton are more than just good neighbors. Through their activism, they frequently collaborate with local businesses and organizations to create floats for the state fair pride parade. Morton also organizes an annual fundraising gala through CORAL, which usually brings draws around 400 to 500 people.

They consider their community their family, and a big part of their relationship as well.

“We were raised in communities,” Morton said. “We believe in participating as a member of the community — my ideas aren't necessarily better than yours, and maybe together we can do something better.”

5. Find what works for you

Like many other gay couples who began relationships in the 80s and 90s, the logistics of their relationship were often complex. In 2013, the two got married in Iowa, one of the three states at the time to offer same-sex marriage licenses, and in 2015, their Illinois civil union became legally recognized as a marriage after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry.

But once they were officially married, Morton and Korty had different views on the term “husband” and what it meant to them.

Korty took a while to warm up to the label. “That to me, in a way, symbolized ‘he's the husband, so he's the masculine one, or you are the wife,’” he said. At the same time, he thought “partners” sounded too much like they were business associates.

Meanwhile, Morton loved calling Korty his husband. Because he was mostly raised by a single mother, helping his mom around the house taught him how to define his marriage on his own terms, without relying on gender roles.

Plus, being two men helped them focus on their strengths rather than what they’re “supposed” to do in a marriage.

“I like the freedom that gay marriage has brought to that,” Korty said, noting that he’ll do more of the cooking while Morton is in charge of their landscaping.

“I think that the whole society's kind of in that place where whatever roles that were once attributed to man or woman are not quite so much anymore,” Morton said. “And that's a good thing.”

6. Express frequent gratitude for each other

Morton said they both have “gratitude for the good things that we bring,” and that they support each other “even on a bad day, when you're struggling with something and you're embarrassed for yourself.”

To him, that commitment and acceptance towards each other is what makes their life together worthwhile.

“The joy in life comes from holding somebody's hand or sitting with them while they cry or being their friend and finding out that something good happened in their life at breakfast,” Morton said.