My husband and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary this week, and a friend asked me how we made it through a decade without divorce. That's a hard question to answer, but one I've been asked often.

So many clichés come to mind revolving around trust and respect, which are indeed very important, but my stock answer to this question in the past has been "always pee with the bathroom door closed." It's a flip response, but I still like it. I think it reminds couples not to take each other for granted and to preserve a shred of romance and intrigue even a decade or three into the relationship.

But in all honesty, I think the core of a successful, long-term relationship is simply two people who want to stay together and therefore have an equally-as-strong commitment to the cause. There have been a couple of occasions when one or both of us could have justified jumping ship, but the truth is, we want this to work and so -- in its own beautiful-and-dysfunctional way -- it does.