Associating 'linking' Records From Within The Same Table

Hi all, here's a challenge for you:

I'm building an access2000 database for the development department for a nonprofit. The database houses a contact list which is populated by the names, addresses etc. of all the people that have donated money. The organization will often receive a gift from the husband OR the wife - so we want to have 'gift histories' which isolate a unique record (the individual - in this case we don't want to send a thankyou letter to John AND Mary Smith for a gift that came in from ONLY John Smith). However, when the organization has a fundraising event, or wants to identify how much a specific household has donated then we want to run mail merges and reports that pull information from both the husband AND the wife's records.

Currently the only to do these things is a manuel process. We have records for:
John Smith (husband)
Marry Smith (Wife)
THEN WE ALSO HAVE
John and Mary Smith

Therefore, whenever we want to send out a mailing or generate a report we have to delete duplicate addresses from the mail query report, making sure we use the appropriate record for the mailing.

Thus, my question is this:

Is there a way to associate two records from within the same table? That way I could:

run a report for just 'John Smith' OR John Smith PLUS affiliate record.

Send a mailing to 'John Smith' OR send a single mailing to John smith AND affiliate.

This very simple task is actually quite difficult because access doesn't want me to link two records from within the same table. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

- John