Good & Healthy Relationship Advice & Tips

An elderly couple who have just celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary claim regular arguments have helped them stay together.

Joseph Littlewood, 98, and wife Sally, 99, from Chadderton, near Oldham in Greater Manchester,UK, believe marital tiffs help love last - because it allows couples to kiss and make up.

The pair met at a dance hall 81 years ago in 1933. At the time King George V was on the British throne, the original King Kong with actress Fay Wray was being screened in cinemas and Adolf Hitler had just come to power in Germany.

They got engaged in 1936 and married in 1939 as World War II broke out - and their relationship is still going strong today.

The couple now live together in sheltered accommodation, where they enjoy hosting bingo nights and doing fitness classes.

Mrs Littlewood said: 'The advice I would give to young people getting married these days is to argue lots but always remember to get over it.

'It is never worth stewing over. People always have arguments, and in 75 years we are going to have had a lot, but the key is to move on.'

'Kids these days move in together not really knowing what they want from each other. If you are going to move in with someone, or marry them, you have to know you love them,' she advises.

'Everyone is getting divorced these days. They have quick marriages and I just think people do not have what they want.

'They go to live with each other too soon when in reality if you do that you should be in love with each other. Great love, great faith and a great family have kept us together.'

Mr Littlewood added: 'When we were young, people just stuck together - but back then we had courtship and that has now gone by the wayside.'

'A quick wedding wasn’t done in those days and a long engagement gave you time to get to know each other and know if they were who you wanted,' he adds.

Mrs Littlewood worked as a spinner at a cotton mill at the age of 12 and was 'wooed' by finance worker Joseph when he bought her a Mars chocolate bar after a dance.

She said: 'At these dances all the boys would stand at one end and the girls, the other.'

'I will always remember us dancing before he took me on a walk and bought be a Mars bar. He was from a posh family and we were really poor - he just charmed me off my feet,' she says.

'He worked in finance and I worked 6.30am to 5pm every day at the mill. After that we fell in love.'

Joseph proposed and they married at a local Catholic church.

Mrs Littlewood said: 'I wanted to get married straight away. I knew I loved him and he had asked my father. But you just didn’t do that back then and Joseph was from a Catholic family.'

'You had long engagements, so we didn’t get married until 1939. We were innocent back then,' says the 99-year-old.

Just weeks after the wedding Joseph enlisted with the army and was sent to Cairo and the North African desert as a ‘height finder’, analysing the height of enemy planes in the skies. 

The couple did not see each other until the war ended in 1945.

Sally said: 'We wrote love letters to each other because it was the only way we could cope with not seeing each other for six years. 

'I would just tell him what I was up to and that I loved him.

'I was constantly worried there would be an official letter saying something had happened to Joseph.

'At the end of the war I met him at the train station. He was getting off and he had no hair. He had lost his beautiful blonde hair while he was out there,' she remembers.

'I grabbed him hard and it was lovely. We haven’t been separated since. We still love each other,' she admits.

The pair have two children, Wyn, 68, and Terence, 66. Through Terence they also have two step-grandchildren and a step-great-granddaughter called Molly, aged two.

Daughter Wyn said: 'Unless things were really really bad between married couples, it used to be the case they would try to stay together through thick and thin. I think the thing about my parents is that they just try really hard and they kept working at it.

'No relationship is perfect. My mum gets fed up when my dad falls asleep and she ends up throwing a shoe at him and my dad gets annoyed when my mum is impatient.

'Everyone argues, but it’s moving past that. These days there are benefits for people, for single mums but back then there weren’t so you had no choice but to try.

'My parents hit the jackpot though. They have had a wonderful life.'