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Years ago when I told coworkers I got engaged I kept hearing “you’re making a mistake” and “why?” I knew immediately that these dudes were losers that did not value their partner as much as I do. I could not imagine being without my wife. She is my best friend, companion, champion, confidant, partner in life among so many other things. Find the right person to share your life with, marriage is an investment.
I've considered it a good thing to get the "You're making a mistake" pushback for things like marriage and kids. Because it is hard and you do have to give up and lot of things for it, so you had better be damn sure thats what you want.
You should be able to hear that (from certain types of people) and think "what the hell do they know?". And if you do think "oh, damn, am I making a mistake?" then you should really fully stop and consider that question.
I think it's easy for people to fall into the traps of thinking marriage and kids are just the next steps in life and things will get better when you're married. Marriage doesn't make anything better.
A lot of people say things like "marriage is great, but its a lot of work". Those are the people that I'm like "really? Sounds like you maybe did make a mistake there" because (and I'm not expert, I've only been married once) it's really easy being married to my wife.
I think you may not be understanding the meaning of “marriage is great, but its a lot of work”. Its not like work meaning carrying lots of bags of gravel or something.
The "hard work" in marriage is being truly open to communication, working hard yourself to communicate accurately, and being honestly self reflective. Its recognizing your own shortcomings, and trying to better yourself, but also being open to being told by your mate where your thoughts or efforts or deficient. A natural human reaction is to be defensive, possibly even striking back with your own criticisms of the other person in the moment, but that's immaturity. Its hard work making real positive changes in yourself as the result of all of this.
When you have a mate you love and a mate that loves you, you can know these are things not said in malice, but in a genuine effort to make you a better person. All of this is a balance with your own sense of self-worth and critical thinking to properly evaluate your internal and the external criticism.
All of that is hard work.
Then there's another part too that I'm seeing in the years ahead: seeing your spouse's health decline and being their caregiver as your own health is failing from age at the same time. Alternatively, being that first declining health spouse, and watching your mate grow ever more tired caring for you. All of this effort are expressions of love, but it is most certainly hard work.
I find confrontation pretty difficult, and I force myself to be direct and assertive about my needs and wants with my husband, because he deserves it. A common mistake I made in previous relationships was bottling up things I didn’t like, but that leads to resentment every time. I understand the value of communicating openly with him, even if it feels like I’m not being “chill” enough and he is receptive to it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard.
My husband has a similar problem with talking about his preferences, because he was always taught that they’re secondary to his partner’s. He finds it difficult to tell me that he wants to spend time on solo activities, but I encourage him to practice his hobbies. Even though he knows I’m happy for him to decompress however works for him and to engage in the things that bring him joy, he still struggles against himself to do it, for us.
I make decisions differently because of our marriage (I have pretty significant executive dysfunction, so these might not sound like struggles to others, but they certainly have been for me)- where I previously might have just eaten lentils in a lean month, I now push myself to work more to support us. Where I used to write papers in a 48 hour frantic dash, now I start earlier and make sure I can allot breaks for meals with him and a regular sleep schedule (we live in basically a studio apartment, so keeping the computer on makes it hard for him to sleep). Where I would have left laundry hanging on the drying rack basically until I wore it again, I now force myself to put it away as soon as it’s dry (again because of the space issue).
I don’t think the marriage certificate itself caused these changes, but knowing that we’re in it for the long haul changed how I think about my relationship with my husband. I realized that I needed to work on myself to become the partner he deserves, but other people might be able to get to that mindset without the permanence of marriage. I just wasn’t and didn’t realize it until it changed.
Each of those changes is a positive one imo, even without considering their effects on our marriage, and we’re both improved for having married each other. That’s not even addressing the joy of being able to fully relax with the knowledge that your partner loves, accepts, and supports you, and will stay with you, even if things get difficult.
Just wanted to point this out. Life is supposed to be hard , Marriage isn't supposed to be.
Nah I would disagree... 99% of marriage is just pure fun. However people forget about 1% that is relationship maintenance. This is work. Not the hardest work, but work.
But some people just ignore the fact you should take special care of this relationship. People can very easliy and slowly grow apart...
The hardest example is if a married person starys getting in love with someone else. This is common and noone is imune to this. However having a doscussion about this with your partner is unplesent and would more likely fall into a category of hard work as compared to category of fun...
Probably I am just disagreeing with the how much 'a lot' represents...
Relationship maintenance isn't exclusive to marriage. It's just a part of life.
also
Nah man. Not common at all. Not saying it doesn't happen but I'd really need to see something that this is 'common'
Relationship maintenance not being exclusive to marriage does not make it suddenly fun.
First do note I distinguish between loving someone and falling in love. My native language have two different words. One for the deep connection (being in love) and one for temporary feeling (deeply loving).
Married people falling in love (temporary feeling) is common. Not saying it happens to everyone every day. But you do not imagine people around you would often tell you about this really sensitive private topic?
Imagine you suddenly get a hot and a really friendly coworker that you have to spend time with them every day working on a project. It is in nature of falling in love to fall in love with a person you spend this much time with.
How on earth do you imagine there is so much cheating and divorce (especially with coworkers) in the world? People misinterpret a temporary feeling for a deep connection. And some even for destiny... This of course often leads to cheating.
I think we are again just differently interpreting a subjective word "often".
In my opinion people saying marriage is happy but it is a lot of work just mean, you should not forget about relationship maintenance. There are reasons 40% of people in relationships end up cheating. And I do not believe it is because couples are just incompatible. In my opinion this is a natural outcome of letting yourself grow apart from your spouse. And not being careful about getting attached to new people. And both are just symptoms of leaving out the "hard work" of the relationship maintenance.
You can feel how you feel and have wants. It's up to you to respect the other person enough to let them know they need to move on.
People don't cheat because of a lack of relationship maintenance. It's a lack of respect.
Cheating indicates a lack of respect for the significant other to break things off. If there is a situation where you can't leave the relationship then you're not in a position to cheat, because you can't be good partner for the other person.
It's the same as finding a wallet and taking all of the cash. You should try and return the wallet, not take the cash.
This is the same thing. Maintaining trust, maintaining respect, maintaining spark, maintaining romance etc... All this falls into a category of maintaining relationship. And failure of maintaining each category can lead to disintegration of marriage...
Those trash coworkers are the worst. And they even try to give you relationship advices... (Eg. About how you should keep everything separate etc...)
No, I do not want to hear an advice on how to live a happy marriage from 3x divorced dude without friends.