When you do your job right they stay trued and tensioned until you bend the rim on a road obstacle unless you wear out the braking surfaces before that and need to rebuild the wheel while it's still otherwise in fine shape.

I got 12-14 years out of my last front wheel without touching it until breaking a leg, getting fat, and learning that 200+ pounds of load on a 400 gram rim doesn't last.

Wore out my big ring, got a spontaneous down-shift, crashed, and only got five years out of the last rear before I needed to deal with it.