Why do longtime partners split after getting married?

Comments on Why do longtime partners split after getting married?

1. umm… you’re a genius.. and i think you’ve helped me with my expectations with FH… thanks! i think we need to talk… i think we’re in the same chapter..just not the same page LOL

2. Sigh… if there was a lot more sensible advice like this and a lot less Oprah I think we’d all be much better off.

   You should totally write a book 😉

   • i agree! 🙂

     • She did?! 😉

3. Wow…

   Speaking from a divorced perspective, if I had really talked to my partner before hand, I would have NEVER married him. But, if I hadn’t married him I wouldn’t have my son.

   But, your advice is major and majorly simple. Thank you. It has given me some clarity and some closure. And if I ever (I hope!) walk down the aisle again, I’ll be doing alot more talking!

4. Wow, great post! Personally, the year immediately following my wedding has been pretty smooth-sailing, but I can recall how difficult the time between proposal and wedding was. Even though we had been dating for 4 years and living together for 2, you’re right that a lot of the important couple conversations often get put off.

5. I think you also have to look at why partners decide to change their status after a long time in equilibrium. I suspect that there may already be trouble in paradise a lot of times, and people hope that getting married will “fix” that. Changing long-established patterns is difficult and disruptive, even if it just seems like a big party with a trip afterwards.

   • This is probably true. I have a friend who was with her ex for 4 years and was getting pressured by her parents to finally get married. The marriage lasted just around 2 years and part of that was because he joined the military and I guess they had to stay married while he was in A school (part of it was that she wanted GI money to go to school too).

   • Yes, totally this. My ex and I were together for almost four years before we got married. I’d gotten pregnant when we were talking about getting engaged, because I was emotionally pushy (and also 21) and unwilling to admit that maybe we weren’t compatible. When we’d been engaged for a year with no planning, I suddenly came home one day and said, “Nothing in our life is changing. We’re getting married in 8 weeks.”

     Jesus, what a bad idea, in retrospect.

     By the time we divorced, after three years of marriage, it was apparent that we just didn’t want to same life at all and didn’t have compatible emotional vibes. (Like, at all.) It basically took us an explosion in our marriage to wake up and realize it was time to call it.

     Teal deer: As friends and co-parents, we’re solid. But by the time we got married, our relationship was already on the outs, and we can both tell in hindsight that my pregnancy kept us together.

6. I think there are a lot of great points raised here but I just wanted to add that I think a lot of the time, the relationship was troubled to begin with. If things aren’t going great, some people think being married will make things better. A band-aid wedding like a band-aid baby. Then after a few months they realise that the relationship is fundamentally the same and they spllit up.

7. I’ve seen it happen once or twice among friends and friends-of-friends, and what tends to happen in those cases is that one partner (generally, though not always, the female half of a straight couple) has been having the whole relationship *to* the wedding. She’s had “getting married” in her head for five or eight years (in the case of my friends, often since she was 18 or 19) and then suddenly, having followed through, realizes that nothing is “fixed,” nothing is “different,” and suddenly she has nothing to plan to.

   • I almost did this. I dated my first boyfriend from age 18 on for five years. We always planned to get married, were practically engaged, etc. We never got as far as a ring or wedding planning, but eventually I caught myself and realized I was living to the wedding and that I needed to jump ship way befor the follow through or I’d be stuck unhappy and stifled forever. and by forever, I mean until I had the sense to get divorced.

8. I am one of those geeky brides who reads lots of things. Books about marriage, books about getting married, books about being married, books about the problems with being married, etc. One of the most important books I read was The First Year of Marriage By Miriam Arond, Samuel L. Pauker. I swear to god this has helped me more than anything. I have recommended it to friends and family who have just gotten or are getting married.

   It addresses this problem. It says much of what you do. But it also points out one good thing (for those of you who don’t want to read a book to figure this out) Marriage is hard! And it takes work and communication and mutal respect and love. And it’s still hard. It’s always going to be hard. Unless you marry a robot you can program to always say the right things.

   • Amy, I’m so happy that our book was helpful to you. We interviewed and surveyed hundreds of couples to break through the code of secrecy about the first year of marriage to help people assess their own experience with greater clarity and perspective. It’s always rewarding to hear when our book makes a difference in people’s lives!

9. So this was me in my first marriage, in that we’d been together 8 years prior and we split up before even a year had passed. I don’t think our case was to do with expectations, but rather myself changing my own viewpoints about things after the wedding. If we’d actively sat down before the wedding I think we’d have been on the same page, but then I changed page after!

   But I definitely agree that this might be the case for a lot of people and talking a lot prior to the wedding is important and something I’ve done a lot this time. I also think you need to stay on the ball in terms of tending to/looking after your relationship during the engagement period. It’s easy to keep yourself occupied with all the planning that goes on, I was wrapped up in it last time and I’m not sure but maybe if I’d stopped and examined our relationship in that period, maybe the changes in me had already started to happen. Keep focussed on your relationship with each other before, so there is no crash back down to earth once all the celebrations/planning is over.

10. My FH and I did a prewedding skills based class one on one for six sessions with a therapist. It was called the Prepare Enrich program I think. We took a little test first, separately, to see where we agree and disagree about various things and the therapist then compares it and finds the areas of your relationship where possible issues could occur if you are not aware of your differences (such as how you deal with mony or raising children etc). It was useful for us to learn about expectations and gave us exercises for practicing better communication before a problem arises. I think there are other program like this and many churches also offer premairrage counseling to help you prepare for marriage even if you have already been cohabitating for 5 years as my FH and I have. I highly recommend some form of preparation even if it is just buying a premairrage workbook and going through it together.

11. I think really sitting down and talking about your future and expectations is a wonderful idea for all couples. I found a list of things to discuss, before you get married, on the internet. Many of the topics I hadnt thought of before but I can now see are very relevant.
    My fiance and I are going to order in this weekend, crack open a bottle of wine and make a night out of talking about all the topics on this list.

12. Half of all marriages end in divorce, anyway. It’s a crapshoot no matter how you slice it.

    • I understand people who found this comment overly flip, or the use of the statistic careless. But at the same time, as a child of parents who divorced after 23 years (so many of which seemed the model of joyful love), the “crapshoot” theory seems like a fair approximation of the idea that there are a lot of things in life in the world that we just cannot anticipate. Ultimately there’s no way to know yourself, someone else, how you will grow and change over time, or the circumstances you will face together well enough to be sure that forever is something that can really happen for you.

      Sure, we can go through all manner of checklists and conversations and counseling, and all the better on us if it makes our relationships better! But for me I can’t help thinking that we should be doing it not as a hedge against divorce but to invest in the relationship we’re in now — albeit, surely, the one we dearly want to be in for life. As with anything, we can do our very best and hope.

13. Well sure, Jezebel/Dodai — but that’s not really the point. Common sense suggests that if you’re partnered for years and years before getting married, you’ve maybe got a few things figured out with your relationship … and perhaps your marriage won’t end in divorce within, oh, the first year.

    • Thats what Im banking on. Been together for 8.5 years and getting married in a month. I sure hope we make it.

14. Jezebel – that’s a misuse of statistics. Just because “half of all marriages end in divorce” (which, strictly speaking, isn’t true – but that’s a whole other ball of wax) doesn’t mean that each individual marriage is a “crapshoot”.

    People who take time to thoroughly discuss things before getting married and while married do NOT have a 50% chance of getting divorced. People who don’t discuss anything have a much higher than 50% chance of getting divorced. It won’t solve everything and there are other reasons people get divorced (see Rosalie’s comment above), but it goes a long way toward reducing the likelihood.

15. My fiance and I got engaged and are getting married *because* we talk about things all the time. We both have goals that align (but aren’t exactly the same – that would be kind of creepy), want the same things for ourselves and see our futures as a wonderful adventure that we’re lucky enough to be able to explore with the person that we love.

    I agree, communication has got to be at the forefront of a relationship. If you can’t communicate, getting married won’t make it any easier. I’m watching a girl I know get married this year and (from the outside – I could be wrong) it appears to be a “band-aid” wedding. Any time that she talks about them fighting over stuff, something that always gets said is “After the wedding, it’ll be different”. Well – um – unless either she or he wakes up as a completely different person one day, no, it won’t. I really hope that they manage to figure out how to talk about their stuff and *communicate* with each other as to how they see their relationship.

    And yes, marriage *is* work. Relationships are work – friends, family, lovers – they all require an investment of time and effort that most people are willing to make because they care enough about the other party to keep plugging away. Even when someone makes you shake your head and think, “WTF??” if you love them, you make the effort to understand instead of just throwing up your hands and walking away. It *is* a two-way street, though … and respect and compassion have to be given as well as received.

    *whew* That got kind of preachy, didn’t it? Sorry – in a nutshell, communication is key!!

    • I think it’s really easy, and that many couples are used to hearing these days, about marriage/relationships being work. But in practice it’s harder to absorb that. I know that my relationship with my boyfriend has been a lot of work, and we’ve had some awful fights, but that it’s never not been worth it. It’s so easy to let doubt creep in and start thinking “gosh, why am I having to work so hard? if this was right, it would be easy.” I think younger generations today are so used to rampant individualism that we are almost afraid to sacrifice for another person, or have been taught that to do so compromises what is “more important,” i.e. our Selves. No wonder we have such a problem with divorce!

    • I totally agree with your statement that too many people think that finding *the one* will then mean that their relationship and subsequent marriage will be smooth sailing – then as soon as things get difficult they start doubting their partner/spouse rather than assessing the situation for what it is: a situation. The basis of any good relationship whether it be a marriage or a friendship or a long-term relationship is working as a team. My parents got a divorce after being together for 8 years + 10 years of marriage, and the best way my mother was able to describe it was that they were no longer a team. My boss, who is a wealth of great advise, has said the same – relationships, whether they have “marriage” stamped on them or not, is a lot of work, and it never stops being work.

      • It probably complicates things also that for some people, it isn’t actually a ton of work. My late husband and I fit together VERY well. I think it was just a quirk of luck to find someone so ridiculously compatible, but we didn’t really fight and I can’t think of any times of feeling like “why do I have to work so hard?” We were together 10+ years until he passed away suddenly, and through some pretty major issues. We were just weird.

        So I can see how if you know a couple who are genuinely like that, a normal relationship would potentially seem like something is wrong, especially with all the ‘soulmate’ ‘happily ever after’ stuff we get fed as kids. But it’s the couple that has no real issues that’s the outlier, not the people who have occasional road bumps.

        (I mean, not to say that we didn’t disagree, but we never disagreed on anything major and I can think of exactly one actual thing I would consider a fight that we had. Most of our disagreements were either arguing for fun and had an element of silliness, or we agreed way more than we disagreed on the topic at hand, so things never got that element of emotional tension that gets people wound up and upset.)

        It’s actually been an issue for me in recent years when I’ve started feeling ready to date again, because I have to remind myself that it isn’t fair or reasonable to expect to find someone else I fit with in the same way, and if I have a minor squabble or have to compromise with someone over something like attitude towards finances or ideal frequency of travel, it doesn’t mean we’re horribly suited for each other and should just move on to dating other people. (You know, like “omg, we don’t agree exactly on this precise thing, we’re DOOMED!” ridiculousness. My brain can be very melodramatic sometimes. 😀 )

16. Being together a long time before you get married is not a bad thing. A bunch of posts here infer that there is something wrong if you wait so long. I have 2 other friends in long term relationships and the truth is that every couple is different and it can go either way, regardless of how long you have been with the person! No one I know waited a long time and it ended up being that there was something wrong that was thought to be fixed with a wedding. Some people just wait simply…..to wait.

    My partner and I were together for 10 years before we got married. For many many reasons we waited a long time to finally tie the knot- one of which being I wanted to finish all my education before we started our life together (which involved moving halfway across the world and wouldnt be fair to him to leave the job he loved). We also started dating when we were young and knew we should be a little more grown up before we made the commitment!

    My husband and I purposely had a very small wedding with only 17 people because when we finally decided to get married, we just couldnt wait!

    Ariel is absolutely right I think, in that communication is usually the thing that makes or breaks the relationship. The relationships I’ve seen fizzle have been those in which the couple were not willing to listen to each other’s ideas/beliefs/concerns. Like someone else mentioned, marriage is hard work, as with any important relationship in your life. The people that ignore this fact will end up in turmoil.

17. really good advice. we’re doing marriage counseling with our pastor and he gave us this book to work through–and while most of it insults my female intelligence and strokes my gag reflex a little (thank you, focus on the family!), it has a really useful section called “great expectations” that prompted us each to describe what we expected out of our marriage in all sorts of areas (living arrangements, contact with extended families, travel and entertainment, finances, education, kids, everything) and then come together to share our ideas. identifying my hopes/expectations on my own was good because the focus was on what *i* expect and not on trying to reach an agreement right away, and discussing was good to see where we had similar/dissimilar/realistic/unrealistic expectations for our life together.

    so, i do think that understanding what you and your partner expect (as well as, cheesy as this sounds, how they perceive affection, a la “the love languages”) are two of the most important things in maintaining good communication in a relationship. but what do i know…i’m only 21. =)

18. I just think it’s refreshing to see a site about weddings take a moment to focus on the marriage.

19. This is THE TRUTH and nothing but!! My hubbie and I are always saying this same thing . lol

20. This really corresponds to what family sociologists have noticed: Some couples who have been together a really long time feel social pressure to either get married or split up. They don’t want to split up, so they basically “fall into” marriage (even if they aren’t especially confident about the relationship’s long-term potential). So they basically just slip into marriage by default, which isn’t a recipe for success! I loves me some sociology!

21. Huzzah to Ariel for giving us eye candy AND thoughtful articles!

    Well said. I would add another book recommendation–I actually picked it up because I’m in an interracial relationship and knew that making assumptions about people’s communication styles from different backgrounds would just be disastrous.

    It’s “Mixed Matches: How to Create Successful Interracial, Interethnic, and Interfaith Relationships” by Joel Crohn. But I would recommend it to anyone, simply to recognize that what people say, what they mean, and how you hear it are often 3 different things.

22. SM said: Being together a long time before you get married is not a bad thing. A bunch of posts here infer that there is something wrong if you wait so long.

    Wow, that’s certainly not something I would ever want to imply! Andreas and I were together for 6+ years before we got married, and I’m absolutely glad we waited.

    I don’t think anyone was implying that there’s anything wrong with waiting — just offering theories on why some folks who wait a long time sometimes might then bafflingly break up after the wedding.

23. Funny how this jives with the advice I give at every wedding/shower/etc:

    Everything Changes, But Everything Remains the Same. Never Take Each Other For Granted.

    I should add, “never make promises for later that you wouldn’t keep now.”

    • "never make promises for later that you wouldn't keep now."
      AMEN, sister!

    • “Everything’s different
      Nothing’s changed
      Only maybe slightly rearranged” – Stephen Sondheim, Company, which is all about marriage 🙂

24. Funny I was just thinking about this last night.

    I knew a couple who were together for 13 years and got divorced after 14 months. Their story pretty much terrified me and I still think about them from time to time.

    I think it comes down to more than just communication. I think a big part of it is that both members of the couple have to place the same value on marriage. I know it sounds like the same thing, but in my mind it’s different.

    Part of the reason I feel comfortable marrying my finance, even though I wouldn’t have married my old boyfriend of 6 years, is because I know that he believes so strongly in the commitment of marriage that he will fight tooth and nail to keep us together. I loved my ex very much, but to him marriage would not have strenghtened his idea of commitment. It would have been just an excuse to throw a party and hope for the best.

25. Ariel – I totally get what youre trying to convey. One of the reasons I like your website is how diverse and wonderful the couples are.I am sensitive about this topic as both myself and several other friends of mine were put down by people who thought it “odd” that we didnt get married after 5 yrs of being together.

    I thought this was an interesting topic as I really dont know many people who have gone through this. I hear more of the been together for 6 yrs, broke up and immediately found the love of their life.

26. Ariel you should totally start writing “Offbeat Wife” if you haven’t already! Please! Always a pleasure to read your sane and well-worded advice 🙂

27. “Being together a long time before you get married is not a bad thing. A bunch of posts here infer that there is something wrong if you wait so long.”

    Well, if you ever want to have a family, there IS such a thing as waiting too long before you get a commitment. Unfortunately we get 10 fewer years than the guys do to get our shit together before we have kids.

    • Although evidence is coming out that this is less and less true, although women have a harder end date of fertility. Advanced paternal age is more correlated with birth defects and health problems than advanced maternal age. Advanced paternal/maternal age is clinically defined as 35. That’s not to say that one can’t have health children after that age (heck, my mom was 36 and 38 when she had me and my sister, my dad was in his 40s) but that both men and women’s fertility and gamete quality declines with age.

28. Sure, Karen. But getting married and family planning are not always the same thing. There are plenty of committed couples who have kids before (or without ever) getting married. Just as there are plenty of married couples who are child-free and don’t want to have children at all. I think it’s risky to start lumping marriage and family planning into the same time-constrained bucket.

29. On 95 in Philadelphia, there are billboards for Robbin’s Diamonds. It’s a picture of a woman, sticking up her ring finger, with the caption “She’s tired of waiting.” They’re funny, in all honesty, but I think it’s pretty telling of the general view towards marriage and dating. Marriage is seen by some as the ultimate, the goal-not the adventure. And for couples who have been dating a while, there might be a bit of sh*t or get off the pot, if you will. The timing is different for everyone, whether you’ve been dating 8 months or 8 years.

    Communication is so, so, so key. It has saved us countless fights and is probably the reason we’re still together, let alone getting married.

30. Me and the husband: longtime friends, long time dating, long time engaged, married, children of divorced parents.

    I absolutely have to agree that expectations are a huge part of the way a relationship changes after marriage. And a big part of that, I suspect, is that so many people think once you’re married you’re ‘done.’ Like somehow you no longer need to work at the relationship because you’re married (despite everyone knowing how common divorce is) when the truth is marriage isn’t functionally any different than dating except you fed a lot of people and bought some rings. As part of our weddinged reception (long story) we are promising not to ‘be together’ forever, but to work at loving each other forever. Sort of a different expectation, imo!

    If you go and assume that marriage is an automatic assurance of happiness and togetherness, you’re bound for double whammy; you expect that your needs and wants will continue to be met by your partner and they aren’t, and you resent the idea that you have to do things to work on the relationship now that you’re married. I’ve talked to both of my parents about it and feel quite certain that this is what happened to them.

31. Bravo! To Jan for raising this important issue, and to Ariel, as ever, for wise and common sense advice. This has been of grave concern to me in the past and I have had the same theory for a long time.
    I knew this awesomely laid back, best-friends couple once who’d been living together for 11 years, were separated and filing for divorce less than a year after their wedding. I saw this and similar time and time again and for many years it made me very anti-marriage, until I realised, or inferred, what the problem was. Discussing and understanding one anothers’ expectations for marriage has been a primary focus for us among all this wedding planning. I’m so glad this is being discussed.

32. Kate, I think you make a very good point about our society in general treating marriage as the destination instead of the journey. All those Disney movies, the prince and princess get married and live happily ever after, right?

    I’ve got a friend who is convinced that if she and her on-again off-again boyfriend get married, he’ll have to change all the behaviors that bother her. (Like being a sphincter flambe and having a drug problem.) She doesn’t want to hear anything to the contrary.

    I wonder if some of the “long-term couples who split soon after marrying” thing has to do with the way you approached things in the first place. I know with a former roommate/good friend of mine, there were a lot of things that she did that bothered me when we lived together, but I mostly just let it slide, figuring that we were just roommates, and it was temporary. By the time we parted ways, there was a lot of repressed irritation I had to unpack. With my intended, however, we’re both pretty good about letting the other one know how we feel about things and working out a compromise, which is one of the reasons I feel so comfortable with the idea of spending the rest of my life with her. And I think part of why we’ve both been so willing to put so much into that is that we’ve both felt from early on that this could be a life-long thing, so it mattered more to get things worked out now.

    So I wonder if some of the couples don’t find that marriage either A) doesn’t fix the things they wanted changed, or B) makes them wake up one morning to realize that they’ve signed up to spend THE REST OF THEIR LIVES with someone who is never going to pick up their underwear from the bathroom floor or call when they’re running late or bother to remember when you’ve made plans and generally just drives you INSANE and it’s just ARRRGGGGHHHH. And then they file for divorce.

    Maybe if you’d been dealing with it all along, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Or maybe it would have been, and you’d have split up awhile back. As it was, you drifted along not rocking the boat, and now you realize you’re way the hell downstream from where you wanted to be.

    Obviously, I’m not saying that’s the case for all long-term couples. I just wonder if that’s not part of it sometimes.

33. “Ideally, they’ll just magically overlap.”

    This is me and CDH. We are so blessed – I don’t know how it happened. Everything fits, everything works. It’s amazing.

    We talked a LOT before we got married, because we both realised the the ‘wedding’ was a big fun party, and after that we still had to come home to each other every night. We discussed every whim, every dream, every value, every eventuality. They all fell together like perfectly cut jigsaw pieces.

    Talk. Always talk. Your partner is the most interesting person on the planet – I never get tired of listening to his ideas and hopes and dreams.

34. Thank you so much for posting this. I have wondered the same things and the advice you gave was so simple, yet so brilliant. Sometimes it just takes an outsider to show you the answer that is right in front of you and makes the most sense! Thanks again!

35. It is funny how you mentioned the traditional versus modern roles! It is probably a stuggle for my partner to figure out what I want when it comes to this… we already determined he would be the stay-at-home Dad, but at the same time, I totally believe that the guy should be the masculine/disciplinarian and all that. I am totally a mish-mash of tradition and modernism (or should I say post-modernism?).
    I think there is also this whole, “I have been dating her for six years, I better propose now. *sigh” thing that some guys go through. People will totally disagree with me on this one, but I am of the firm belief that if you don’t know within the first year you become a “couple” then you aren’t really meant for eachother. All the long-term couples I know have all said the same thing about knowing their spouse was the one…. “I just knew!”

    • I knew I wanted to be with him forever within three months, but neither of us were ready for marriage until 7 years in. We needed to grow up before we did that.

      • I don’t want to say its a bad thing if you don’t know right away. I have no idea, but I suspect people can slide into the knowledge gradually and have healthy marriages. My partner and I did just know early on. Within 1-2 months. But we were kids, literally, I was 16 and he was 19.

36. I think I should amend what I said about the whole knowing within the first year… this doesn’t mean I advocate getting married right away for all couples lol! It just means that I think most couples have a gut feeling soon off whether it could work, or whether it won’t. It is better to get out early then to build a life with someone who isn’t right for you.

37. This is great advice. I find most peoples advice a load of crap and not really applicable to myself, however I have not thought about this and think it’s so very important to discuss. Thanks for the great blog, as always.

38. What superb and insightful advice. My partner and I have lived together for 3 1/2 years now and have been together for nearly seven years. The first year and the third years were probably our rockiest, so we didn’t know that ‘it would last’ until probably the end of the third year. In saying that, there were signs from both of us throughout the relationship that neither of us felt it was worth ‘giving it all up’ for any of the issues we came across, whether minor or major. I think this bodes well for a married future that we have both talked about, but I think we need to do it at a time when there aren’t so many weddings going on around us. My partner is always getting teased by newly-weds or newly-engaged friends about getting me a ring, and ‘isn’t it about time’, which is totally the wrong motivation for marriage, obviously. At the same time, I think I will ‘propose’ to have a long talk with him someday soon about our future expectations, as things are still up in the air career-wise for us, but for me especially, a disillusioned grad student! Great wedding blog without the solipsistic guff. 😉

39. WOW! Didn’t think my comment would get so many folk talking! But am glad it had, thank you Ariel for your advice, and everyone who had commented. Its great to get so many different ideas and opinions.
    Me and my partner have been together for 7 years, and getting married this year. We did deiced to get married in the first month of knowing each other, no romantic proposals, just in the kitchen and said to each other, we should get married, I can even remember who said it, me or him or both. I think we would have married in the first year, we tried, but when my normally fantastically understanding parents suggested we should have chicken in a basket for the food, were vegan/veggie, then the shock of what no meat…you can t do that, other people feed you vegan food at wedding…I just couldn’t handle the stress of it all. So just decided to put it on a back burner, until we could afford to do it all ourselves, so we didn’t feel obliged to do what others wanted because they were contributing.
    I am glad we waited, I think we would have split up, definitely. But then 6 year on, I felt ready to finally do it, it was wasn’t that I never wanted to, I just needed to be sure. Really sure.SO ball rolling, plans in motion, I think her would have married me at any point, but it was me that wanted to wait, and I really hate the fact everyone assumes it him, finally making a ‘honest woman out of me’ what crap. Not all women are dreaming of their wedding day from year dot, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it was something I had really considered that must. For most of my teenage life I was a broken mess, and for most parts thought all men were c**nts. So getting past that, to discover i had someone who really loved me, for just who I was, took a bit of accepting. I love him, for who he is, and what he is not.I don’t want to change him, I would like him to take the bins out more often, and remember on occasion, to make the bed…( yes, were from the new generation of lost /mixed roles…ifs it not ‘ans or woman’s work’ then who the fuck does it then! splitting the chores has never been so hard, we both work full time, but why do some women still end up doing all the cooking and cleaning…because we can’t let go? totally different debate…)but I don’t think that’s ground for divorce. But we do forget to talk some times, or some time I think it just too scary, in case we don’t like the answers we may hear.
    But from reading all your posts, yes, tonight, I will go home, as ask, ‘what do we expect form this marriage?’ because if I don’t ask now, I may become a statistic of my own doing. Cheers all xx

40. My partner and I just finished a book called “Don’t get married until you read this book!”. All it is 500 questions to ask eachother. We loved it and it focused on expectations and goals. We found it at our library. Thanks for the great site!

41. “Sure, Karen. But getting married and family planning are not always the same thing.”

    Speaking as the child of divorced parents, I think it probably SHOULD be. But that’s my opinion.

    Anyway, my original point was about commitment, not marriage. If you want to have kids, there’s only so many years you have to do it, and if the guy you’re dating doesn’t want to commit, doesn’t want to promise to be around you come hell or high water, well, then it’s just irresponsible to bring kids into that situation, married or not.

42. @ Karen

    I’m pretty sure that had my parents not gotten divorced… or had even tried to stay in proximity because they ‘committed’ to having children together but weren’t really happy with each other… that would have messed my brother and I up pretty badly (I have a friend whose parents did that and he is an emotional wreck, not that he admits it).

    By the same token… I think they did just fine raising us without having any commitment to each other at all. Were there times when our lives were not 1950’s nuclear family delusional happy? Of course. But I think that sort of unrelenting happiness isn’t possible anyway.

    I don’t think that in order to turn out well a child has to be raised by a mother and a father, or even by 2 parents. So to say it’s irresponsible to have children without first ensuring your partner’s going to be 100% in it (CAN you even guarantee that? People change… my mom and dad planned to have us and thought they were going to be together forever. How long do you wait to be -sure-?) sort of implies that children shouldn’t be raised in any other type of situation.

    I’m with Ariel on family planning and marriage being separate. If you want to plan a family that involves you and your children and no husband (or wife, or whatever) then I think the most important thing is that you -want- that and are a stable, sound, happy person (which a strained relationship of any kind with a partner/former partner/other biological parent of your child) would not be conducive too.

    I am totally sympathetic to the emotional pain of having divorced parents, but the thing that causes that is the divorce itself, not the single parenting, in my opinion. It took a long time for me to understand my parents, and to really get what they did… but I love them both, I know they made the best decisions they could, and I don’t begrudge their happiness at the expense of me having them both 24/7 for my childhood.

    They did all right by me, and I think there are plenty of single parents and non traditional households who do as well. I’m sorry if this gets read negatively, because I hate internet-conflict, but… I feel really strongly about the idea that you CAN raise children, and raise them well, regardless of the family structure and situation.

43. Thanks for this post. I just blogged along similar lines. I had a quite little freakout wondering if getting married was going to jinx us – the equivalent of tattooing his name on myself. I think it was just a momentary thing but if it persists I will, as so many suggested here and there, TALK about it.

44. I know that many universities have secular pre-nuptials courses for those of you who don’t want to do it through a church (I know that it’s required in the Catholic church to go through a length course before you get married. As much gripe as the Catholics get, I have to give them credit for that one).

    The University of Connecticut, for example, has completely secular course for any couples considering marriage. Including how to manage your finances, realizing your expectations, articulating your future goals and priorities, etc. Since I believe CT just now signed same sex marriage into law, it’s for both hetero- and homosexual couples.

    Check your local universities for something similar. I bet there are programs out there.

45. “I feel really strongly about the idea that you CAN raise children, and raise them well, regardless of the family structure and situation.”

    I know it technically *can* be done, but I don’t think it’s easy or ideal. I don’t blame my parents for getting divorced, and my mother did absolutely everything she could have, and for a divorced couple my parents got along very well and put us kids first, but despite all of that, having grown up in a single-parent situation, even a “good” one, I would not recommend it to anyone, nor do I want to do it myself. So to get back to the original subject at hand, yes, I could have waited too long without getting married; it was risky to give my fiance four years of my life if, at the end, he wasn’t going to commit to me like I was ready to commit to him. I’m lucky he was.

    Sorry for the threadjack, everyone. I’ll back out now.

46. Karen, I think your posts are making the point that it is necessary to find a partner who sees the world similarly to you, and who is as committed to the same things as you, and who has the same expectations that you do.

    I know more people who are messed up from “My parents tried to stay together for us but my family was very unstable” than the “amicable divorce, it wasn’t perfect but hey I’m happy”. There is also nothing to guarantee that a two parent household is going to be a good thing for a kid. A single mother with lots of social support may have more interpersonal resources to create a nurturing environment than a socially isolated married couple.

    So my experiences inform a set of expectations of how the world best operates. They are different than yours, but through communication we both find partners who see the world similarly, have the necessary commitments we both expect, and create our families in the visions we see best and hopefully they both work. Neither of our opinions are necessarily correct, but we operate accordingly and so need to overlap them.

    I don’t know, just my two cents.

47. I think you’re right Ariel, many people have expectations that things will change after the wedding. And for a reason! I can’t count the number of people who said to me – “everything changes after you get married, you’ll see.”

    We’ll I’ve been married 27 days and counting, and I have not yet figured out what they are talking about (hubby is mystified too.) Maybe that’s because neither of us wanted anything to change. We pretty much have been on the same page since the beginning.

    When we went on our first date, I was just coming off of a dead-end, 3-year relationship and was feeling a little ornery and in one of those “don’t waste my time” moods. In the first 10 minutes of our first date, I laid out everything I wanted in a relationship: kids, house, family, forever… everything. I pretty much expected him to run for the hills. He just said “That all sounds great!” which about floored me. I may have fallen in love with him right then.

    That moment of ornery honesty set a precedence for the rest of our relationship that has worked great for both of us. I think being clear and honest about expectations (with him and yourself) is great advice Ariel, and not something you need to wait until post-proposal to do.

    • Oh man, I’m so with you on the incredibly fertile ground that getting out of the “last straw” BS relationship leaves you in. When I met my spouse-to-be I was in a similar mood — “whatever, I don’t need this, I’m not going to bend over backwards trying to make it work with some new guy, if you’re not going to call I have no f*cks to give.” Of course, this was a reaction to a pretty raw nerve about getting swept away in a relationship that ends up being two people writing a really romantic story together that has little truth to it.

      Luckily, I was in that mood at the moment I met a wonderful person who was in a similarly ginger place. We planned a trip to Europe together before we could stop calling each other “that person I’m dating … exclusively…” and had to get trashed at a wedding to admit we loved each other for the first time. Yet … all that reluctance and unwillingness to compromise at first turned out to be the true-to-ourselves-ness that helped us build a solid foundation of trust and confidence in one another. I hope we never forget how much it took to keep going with one another when neither of us was ready to be “taken in.”

      Thanks for giving me an excuse to think about all that 😀

48. This couldn’t be more timely, as I just learned that this is happening to a friend.

    My fiance and I spent hours talking about it last night. From our first date, I approached our relationship with honesty, respect and clear communication. We were both coming from previous relationships where the communication was lacking- that we weren’t getting the whole story from our partners.

    And right away, we knew we found something great in each other and have talked openly about money, debt, savings goals, lifestyle goals, children. I think we talk about it all, but yet after hearing this happen, I felt gosh, are we not talking about it enough? Or are we talking about the wrong things?
    I appreciate the book recommendations and will be returning the plan your wedding books and look for these books about cultivating a marriage. It helps me ground our wedding planning- it is a celebration of marriage, it is one day. And the real work we are to do is growing our relationship.
    Any more book recommendations?
    I’d also be interested in a post about pre-marriage counseling. How soon before the wedding to do it? What to expect, experiences.

    Thank you thank you!!!

49. Hawkswine–

    That happened to me too! I came off a dead end, never-was-that-great 1.5 year relationship when I met my groom-to-be. Feeling very fancy free, I laid out everything I wanted (including an ABSOLUTELY NO BOYFRIEND stipulation), which he accepted and 3 weeks later had gained my trust enough to be exclusive. Now we’re going to get married!

    But I agree — I don’t expect anything to change, especially since we have cohabited for the grand majority of our relationship. For non-cohabiting couples I think that marriage *does* change a lot of things for them. Permanently living with someone is extremely different, and so is having sex.

    So I think the problem is that the “everything changes” attitude is based off of the way many marriages used to work. Of course marriage would be different if you’ve never lived with – or slept with, for that matter – that person before. But nowadays most people do those things before marriage, so there’s not much tangible change other than status, recognition, and spiritual bond (if you believe in that).

50. My FH and I are getting married in Sept, and have lived together for practically ALL of the 5 years we have been dating, since we were best friends for 3 years before we ‘kissed’- LOL! I don’t envision anything changing at all. Other than I get his health benefits from his job, lol. And, I’m actually taking his last name!!!! (long story there) But, we have been engaged for 3 years already. What held us back? Mostly me. I’m 41 he is 33. I have kids (19 and 22) and he doesn’t. I don’t really want anymore, and I had to be sure he was of the same mindset because that was HUGE! Of course, I could be persuaded to have A BABY, provided he makes enough money for me to stay home to care for the baby full time. We agreed on this point, and finally went ahead with our wedding plans. I couldn’t agree to it with his ‘we’ll see what happens’ attitude, because I didn’t want to disappoint. I am 41. There isn’t much biological TIME left for me to have a baby…I think this is what happens to people. They don’t go over these fine points. It’s important.

51. you really said it. REALLY.

    in fact – i think your reasoning is exactly why my sister got a divorce after a year and a half.

    before my sister and her ex-husband got married – they really appeared to be perfect for each other, and were very much in love. then BOOM, honeymoon is over, and all of a sudden my sister is more like a mother to her new husband than a wife. totally not what my sister wanted out of marriage – exactly what her ex-husband wanted.

    i think a lot of couples tend to blow off the advice that “communication is THE most important thing in a relationship.” does it sound a little cliche? maybe. but is it good advice? it’s the BEST advice.

    my guy and i never stop talking to each other. sometimes i have to pull it out of him – but he appreciates it. get to know your significant other. focus on how they communicate. chances are you’re both different, and think in different ways – even if it’s not that obvious, because you have so much in common.

    i center my relationship around talking to each other, and trying to understand the way we’re each thinking and why.

    i think another great piece of advice is – apologizing isn’t the end of the world, sometimes you just need to do it. and even when you don’t need to do it, your partner will probably appreciate it more than you realize.

52. ‘Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcano’s, then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision You have to work out whether your roots are so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

    Because that is what love is.

    love is not breathlessness. It is not excitement. It is not the promulgation of eternal passion.

    That is just being in love, which any fool can do, love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both Art and a fortunate accident.

    Those that truly love, have roots that grow toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree, not two.’

    I heard this at one of the weddings I have been too, and when looking out for suitable and truthful readings, this not only moved me, but helped me. Possiably cheesy, but hey…its form captain Corelli’s mandolin.

    Other quote I along similar lines i have found on a card..
    ‘Love is not longingly staring into each others eyes, it is looking out together, in the same direction’. basically a short version of the above, but still basically considering more about the relationship its self, rather than the lustful honeymoon period, that far too many films etc.. have been drumming into us all our live on how it should be for us ,all day, every day. No wonder some people feel disappointed with real life.

53. I’ve seen it time and time again. My ex-boyfriend’s marriage fell apart in this manner (years before I came along.)
    They got married because the relationship was on the rocks and they really expected the “semi-permanence” of the marital contract would somehow fix it.

    When a long-term relationship is on the rocks there are different ways people try to fix it. Some couples get married, some decide to have babies, some get dogs… some go to counseling.

54. Has anyone on here seen the Woody Allen movie “Husbands and Wives”? This thread brings to mind the beginning of that film, where the couple played by Mia Farrow and Woody Allen are horrified — devastated — to learn that a couple they’re longtime friends with are splitting up. In that scene, of course, the humor comes from the fact that the other couple seems relatively unfazed. (Later, of course, we find out that they’re anything but.)

    I guess my point is that there’s something frightening, terrifying even, about seeing another couple who, for all intents and purposes *could be you* deciding to call it quits. And in our desire to distance ourselves from those people, we say, “Oh, but they didn’t communicate the way we do, they weren’t prepared, they didn’t think ahead, they didn’t go to a counselor. They didn’t read this relationship book or that one or learn erotic massage. Their marriage was a band-aid marriage, not a real marriage. They weren’t like me and my fiance/e, not at all. No siree.” We want to blame them, in one way or another, to deem them deficient. We want to believe that what happened to them was preventable because we desperately want to prevent it in our own relationships.

    I’m not saying that we can’t learn anything from other people’s relationships and break-ups, because obviously we can. And I’m not saying that communication isn’t important, because obviously it is. But it’s a bit naive to think that there’s any way armor ourselves against heartbreak and divorce and all the mad messiness of life, any more than we can armor ourselves against death.

    • My “THIS!” button isn’t big enough for this response. 🙂

55. Excellent advice, everyone! My six tidbits (mostly focused around communication):
    1. Go see a couple’s counselor before you make any big commitments. It was counseling that got my husband and I over the problems that were hindering our relationship while we were dating long term. After we were able to forgive each other, we were able to get engaged and then get married. I cannot recommend couple’s counseling enough. Granted, we were excellent with communicating with each other before, but needed a third, unbiased person to get over a few humps that were making our relationship at an impasse.
    2. Get one of those books with the gazillion questions. Even though we knew each other very well (we were good friends for many years before getting together) it’s still good to cover all those areas and ask questions that you may have felt uncomfortable broaching on your own but still need to discuss or topics that you never thought to ask.
    3. If your partner does something that bothers you (even if it’s minor and you feel stupid about feeling that way), tell him/her right away/anyway. Don’t let it fester and then blow out of proportion down the road. Nip the problem in the bud now, saves much heartache.
    4. Treat your partner how you would want to be treated – with the utmost respect, patience, giving them your full and complete attention when they are talking, and never taking him/her for granted. I always try to thank my husband for everything he does both big or small. Appreciation goes a long ways!
    5. Don’t expect your partner to be a mind reader! You have to communicate you likes/dislikes, etc. If you want to make a fantasy a reality, you have to let you partner know.
    6. Realize your partner is as imperfect as yourself. Cut them some slack when they mess up (just like you would want them to cut you slack when you screwed up).
    I could go on and on but I will stop…
    Cheers!

56. 7. Give a heartfelt apology to your partner when you mess up. Admiting your were wrong will speed up the healing process!

57. Hey SM! My wedding will be 3 days before my 10 year anniversary. I too wanted to finish school and grow up some before getting married. For years now friends and family have been making jokes about the long wait. I have decided to laugh along and we have a 10 year anniversary theme for our wedding.

58. We’re getting married one day before out five year anniversary. We’ve lived together for almost four years, so when the minister asked us what we think will change when we get married, it kinda surprised me. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I answered instinctively, “Nothing. At least I hope nothing will change!” My fiance agreed. There are a couple of things that will change in the future, mainly having a child, but for now, we’re really content in our relationship the way it is and besides having a piece of paper and the lifelong commitment, I really hope our day-to-day relationship stays on the same track we’ve been on. When the minister acted like we gave the right answer, I was pleased!

59. As an interpersonal communication scholar (ok, ok, grad student) who’s just seen a friend get divorced after less than 6 months of marriage, I love your advice. People always say that communication is important (and that’s why I study it) but saying that, and finding a way to actually do it is very difficult. Thanks for the concrete questions that should be asked before the wedding, and certainly before the marriage.

60. Hi! I’m not sure if someone has said this but I think you’ve missed why people get divorced after so long being togther and then getting married.

    I bet you that most of them have been together for ages, they have shared bank accounts and property and maybe even babies. But then they feel they aren’t close anymore and so one side of the couple thinks the way to get closer is to be married, so they either propose or try and force/talk their partner into asking.

    Then they get married and marriage doesn’t solve it (and it makes it worse because they are in debut for the wedding). So they divorce and move apart.

    I think this is a much more common situation then people finding ‘being married’ different. Because if you’re living together you’d probably be sharing a lot of things anyway.

    [That said I have no married friends, so this is a theory only.]

61. I recently borrowed the book 1001 Questions to ask before you get married. (It’s by Monica Mendez-Leahy) It’s meant to offer a spring board for questions couples might not ask.

62. Great advice everyone! I am glad I read through all the comments – I am what you would call a hesitant fiance. Although we have agreed to get married after 3 years together, I am having second thoughts. Why can’t we just stay as we are now – happily committed partners? I have plenty of friends that are in 10+ year relationships without any plan of getting married.

    I suppose part of me wonders what will really be different after a legal ceremony versus what we have now. I cannot come up with one tangible thing that would change. So I keep asking myself “why?”

    I was especially glad to read Lisa’s comment about ‘Nothing’ changing after getting married – I guess this is my conundrum: if nothing will change, why bother?

63. Wanda, while nothing about my relationship changed after my wedding, there were a lot of social advantages to being married: easier taxes, shared healthcare, cheaper car insurance.

64. Wanda – We didn’t think much would change after we got married. After all, we were already living together and madly in love. Weren’t we just making it legal?

    Things did change. Getting married, getting up in front of all our friends and family members, looking into each others’ eyes, declaring publicly and legally “you are my new family, and you will forever be the most important person in my life”, it really DID take things to a new level for us.

    Being husband and wife instead of boyfriend and girlfriend… that MEANS something to us. We DO feel closer, less guarded, more dedicated – because we’ve declared, in a very real sense, that committing to each other is more important than keeping our options open.

65. Thanks for the feedback – Ariel I hadn’t really thought about the taxes, that’s a good point. We’ve hadfo shared healthcare for a few years now, and gave up our cars/insurance this year to save $, but I agree some things are better/cheaper when it’s legal.

    Hibryd – thank you, that definitely gave me a new perspective on the situation.

66. I have got to say, thank you! Now I have a print-source for the naggers in my life.

    Both my FH and I are children of divorcees. So whereas we have enjoyed a partnership for almost 10 years now, we have been procrastinating on marriage. Not because we don’t love each other, but because we wonder what weird “isms” we’ll develop once we are – what inner ball-and-chain demons will pop out.

    In fact, my FH is proposing the idea that in our ceremony we leave out “husband” and “wife” altogether. We haven’t decided on a substitute phrase yet, but “spouse-figure” is in the top 5.

    Thanks again!

67. You are abosulutely right!! Those are the EXACT reasons why my first marriage failed–and it was already in that sort of trouble before the actual wedding day. We were both living up to some preconcieved ‘expectation” and niether of us discussed what we wanted.

68. Smurfybride –

    “we wonder what weird “isms” we’ll develop once we are – what inner ball-and-chain demons will pop out.”

    There won’t be. You’ve been together for 10 years. There is nothing left to hide. If you didn’t change by now, you never will.

    If anything, being the child of divorce (and then watching my parents date a series of disasters for the following few decades) made me believe even more in marriage, because I realized what a rare, special thing it is.

    Personally? I love “husband” and “wife”. Those are powerful, loaded words and I love using them. I don’t care what those words meant to my parents. They mean something to me. Calling him “my husband” is a handy way of saying “the most important person of my life, to whom I have given and will continue to give everything I have to offer.”

69. My bf and i, who have been together for 4 years now, are talking about getting married. It’s been interesting. I kind of unexpectedly realized I really wanted to get married and communication has been kind of hard.

    Anyway, I really wanted to recommend The Commitment Conversation as a starting place for talking about these things. (http://www.equalityinmarriage.org/cc2.html) which talks about all the things that anyone in a committment relationship – whether married or co-habitating – should talk about: finances, household chores, sex, kids etc.

    I think your right that a lot of it is communication issues and even though I think my bf and I are really open with each other, having the Commitment Conversation always brings up a lot of stuff.

    Anyway, I’d really recommend it.

70. Statistics Canada said that people who lived together before they were married were 50% more likely to get divorced once they got married than people who did not live together previous to marriage.

71. “We didn’t think much would change after we got married. After all, we were already living together and madly in love. Weren’t we just making it legal?”

    I want to amend my previous statement, because I think I can more clearly state why marriage really did take our relationship to the next level.

    A relationship is about love; marriage is more, marriage is bigger, marriage is more profound than that, than just love or feelings.

    Marriage is not just about the love you feel now, it’s also the love you promise to give for the rest of your life. Marriage is not just a verbal commitment made in the privacy of your own home, it’s a commitment made public, legal and binding. Marriage is not just about having fun and enjoying your current life, it’s vowing that your partner’s fun and enjoyment is now, if anything, more important than your own. Marriage is not just a “celebration” about your “relationship”, it the day you promise to shift your priorities and put the “we” above “me”.

    Marriage is also a nexus, a focal point, the day in which you lay all you are out on the table and say “this is me, and from now on I am yours.” When you’re dating the armor is on, your self-interests are alive and well, but as you get to know each other more the armor slowly comes off. The wedding is when you finally cast it all aside and mutually agree to give everything you have.

    I would follow my husband across the country and give him one of my kidneys when we got there, and I feel safe doing so only because, on the day we got married, he got up in front of his friends and family and promised to do the same for me. I can give more than I ever could while we were dating, or even engaged, because we have already given the ultimate gift to each other: the rest of our lives. There’s nothing left to withhold. There’s no reason left to keep my guard up. He knows I’m not just with him until I get bored or find someone better, because I have said in the loudest, clearest way possible that I would rather live the rest of my life with him than keep my options open.

    Dating is about you, your feelings, your fun, your interests. Marriage is the next level because it is a declaration to the world that your partnership is now a bigger, better, and more important thing than you are on your own.

72. I don't know if I agree that having different expectations of marriage is the primary reason that long-term couples split up. For me, it seems to be more of a confinement issue, as I often think I'd feel suffocated in a marriage. I don't know why but picturing myself in a lifelong, unmarried relationship feels much more "freeing" than marriage. I question whether some long-term couples may experience this feeling of confinement once married and then get divorced. This could just be me, though!

73. Me & Mr. Right have waited seven years before deciding to tie the knot and both of us expect a big change after the wedding, because we want to get preggers immediately! But the key is communication and shared goals. We've talked and talked and talked about it, so we both feel very confident in making these next steps. And if it doesn't work out, at least we know each other well enough after all these lengthy discussions to deal with it amicably. There's absolutely nothing wrong about waiting to get married!

74. Couples who have been together for 6 years and break up – my theroy is More than likely these couples were together for a few years not living together and then bought a place and realised completely different things about each other. Living together and sharing finances is a big issue in many break ups.
    If couples get married thinking this is the next step we have been together for this many years and this is the reason for getting married – don't!!!!
    When i was single i spent every penny i earned plus money i didn't have to spend and went on holidays every year. I met my boyfriend and we connected straight away. We were so different i spent – he was cautious with money. I changed my ways because i knew he made sense and we were able to buy our own place and now save for the wedding. You have to realise that you both can't be right all of the time and compromise is the biggest relasionship saver.

    If you have doubts about getting married because of everyone else's break up stories you will never be happy. You are the only one who knows in your heart that this person you love is the only person you want to be with and you trust and believe they feel the same.

    You will also find couples who have been in the situation of broke up and found love of life, more than likely are couples who met very young and changed their ideas of what the wanted or one or the other had no real previous relasionships and fell into habit with each other.

    The best advice i can give to anyone reading this is 1. Money how both of you treat this . Remember don't think if your partner is being tight it is a controlling thing, it might not be, just ensuring for your future. I thought this at first but i realised he really did have our best interests.
    2. Compremise – it is okay to give in to each other. You are both different.
    3. Allow each other space to do your own things from time to time. You are both individual and deserve that right. You will be better together also. This shows trust , faith and respect between you,
    Hope i have helped somewhat. preacing over and time to head to bed.
    4. Most importantly know how to have fun together and be happy in each other company
    Best of luck to all and don't loose faith. Marriage is and will be hard work if you don't work at it and don't forget each other no matter what is going on in your life at the time. Discuss your feelings no matter how stupid they seem.

75. Usually, those are "bandaid marriages". That's why they divorce after a year. They tried everything.

76. this is a major reason why i'm not getting married. the relationship is good the way it is. don't want to rock the boat for a piece of paper.

77. I'm getting marry in June 2010. My parnter is a great guy. He has 4 kids they are grown. I also has three kids they are also grown. But I love this man very much. Me and him talk, we listen to he other, we both love TV, we talk on the phone just say we love each other,we both love yard work, also we have great sex. We have know n each other for a long time. We both want someone to respect us,listen,love me for me, still continue to have great sex,And sometime just to say Hi.You good point on relationship. Thank you for good thing to read.

78. This is actually a question I've been trying to work out since I was a young girl. My stepfather and my mother were together from the age I was about 2 to around 8 or 9(?). We lived together the whole time as a 'family', and then they decided to get married. They even included my stepsister and I in the ceremony in which we all 'married' together. I was in bliss because I worshiped my dad, so when nearly exactly a year later they broke up it shattered my world. In small ways I think I'm still a little off-kilter about it. As I've tried to work it out all these years I've always came to the same conclusion (once I stopped blaming myself) that they were trying to slap a bandaid on a failing relationship. They were both headed on separate paths in life and I suspect this was where they hit the juncture.

    To be clear, when I say I'm still a little off-kilter, I simply mean that I maybe will never learn to 'trust' a relationship, no matter how long it runs, because I saw up close and personal how two people who were seemingly crazy in love one day, divorced the next. I believe 'they' believed they should be married. I don't think it was a conscious step to 'save the relationship', but an honest unconscious last grab for what they had shared for so long.

    I see where my mom is today – how she lives her life – and how my dad did before he died and I know they did the right thing in splitting up. People grow, and sadly enough, not always in the same direction.

79. I think many couples end up having a lack of true communication, it's because being completely honest can be scary. My Fiance and I live a few states away from each other and in a way it's been a really good thing for us. We talk, really really talk. There is no way to avoid talking as in conventional dating where you can fill that void with dinner, movies, snuggles, and sexy time. We know so much about one another because talking is how we stay close when 1,053 miles separate us. Remember that communication despite being scary is crucial and you have to be brave and bring up the uncomfortable topics because if you don't they'll still be there in the morning.

80. I love this post and I have something to add if I may. My FH has muscular dystrophy and cant do things like go to work evey day, take less than 2 hours getting up into his wheel chair or reach out his arms to hold me. But the things that he can do are amazing, he can set up mu computer when i manage to screw it up, take care of my mothers computer, demand that we take time to talk when things get strained between us and make me feel like a princess. In the daily grind that we all go through i think alot of the little things get lost and we forget why we fell in love with that person in the first place.
    keeping in mind to love and respect the other persons abilities and wonderfullness can help even in the most trying of times. Sometimes all it takes is communicating to the other person that despite the problems you are going through as a couple you still see what is amazing about your spouse. ok, thats all lol. sorry it got a little long winded

81. My husband and I were together 7 years before we got married, 7 months of marriage and it is all over. We went through a rough patch before we decided to get married and decided to try so many things to “fix” it- instead we got married. I read this post at the time and I ignored it- we did talk, a lot, we were working on our relationship and I think we were both incable of recognising that it was over whilst we were in that frame of mind of wanting it to work. Once we got married, we both realised (although I attempted suicide first) that if it felt nearly over now, it would never get better. I don’t think we could have split up before the wedding, and it wasn’t like we had poured a lot of money into it (it must be so much harder if you have). We were on the we’re getting married path and couldn’t realise it wouldn’t work until we got through it.

    • “We were on the we’re getting married path and couldn’t realise it wouldn’t work until we got through it.”

      I think that really sums it up for so many relationships.

82. My sister, after seeing so many of her long-term relationship friends get married and go through a very rocky first few years, has a theory: Those who have been together for so long, who know each other so well, really hope that nothing will change, and expect nothing to change, when they get married. They usually lived together beforehand (there was some statistic here that said that couples who cohabitated pre-marriage were 50% more likely to get a divorce), so really it seems logical that nothing would change except taxes and such. Unfortunately, things will still change when you marry. Hopefully you will have communicated about what could change, as so many people here have suggested. But more likely you are going to expect your relationship to stay the way it is. And you may not have realized your subconscious expectations that are not being met now. Or perhaps you have spent so much time and energy on the wedding itself, and now it’s just going to be boring work and finances, and there seems to be nothing to look forward to. And then you might be afraid that you’re together only because you’ve been so comfortable with each other, and the wedding was exciting and now it’s not anymore, so you might be thinking your relationship is boring now.

    I am getting married after 5 years, during which we both lived together and apart, and I was so worried that something was going to happen our first year of marriage that will cause us to break up. But we have indeed talked about all the stuff we should have, and I’m not too worried about the communication bit. But I am realizing one last thing that I think makes for a successful first few years of marriage: While you’re preparing for your wedding, stay focused on your relationship, your future together, and your lives ahead of you. Focus on the idea of you two buying houses and moving, or learning new professions, or having children eventually, or whatever you will do when you’re married. If you are happy with that, and your partner has the same image of your future, you should be good. 🙂

83. From something that happened to one of the couples I know: something was messed up with the relationship and they hoped being married would fix it. It is the same idea as some married couples who have a baby thinking that that will fix the problems.

84. One thing I think that can change after a wedding is how everyone else treats you as a couple. In the case of a good friend, her boyfriend’s mother had been relatively hands-off when they were living together but unmarried. Going from “son’s girlfriend” to “daughter-in-law” really changed how his mom treated her, and it was not a good change. I’m talking about creepy stuff like letting herself in when they weren’t home and repainting the kitchen, or going through my friend’s closet and “organizing” her clothes, then getting huffy that my friend didn’t collapse in gratitude. My friend didn’t know her hubby was going to let his mother’s antics slide, because in the ten years prior to the marriage they’d never had that problem. They ended up divorcing after a year.

85. With regards to the conflation of marriage and family planning:

    I know this is is an Offbeat site, but geared toward the offbeat bride, not necessarily the offbeat woman. So I think it’s perfectly natural for somebody who doesn’t fall in line with the bridal magazines and expectations to conflate marriage and family planning together because for that individual, they go hand in hand (first come loves, then comes marriage…)

    Anyway, if one is planning a family, and not just planning to propagate, they might want to include the biological father into those plans.

    And the truth is that our reproductive physiology has not evolved as quickly as our social structures have. So while you don’t need to married to have kids…, you do need to get your s*** together while you are still pretty young, if you want to have kids. I know there are plenty exceptions to averages, and it’s nice to think that we can have any sort of life that we want….but our bodies may betray our offbeat sensibilities.

    So…it is possible to wait too long to start a family built on a marriage.

86. It gets tricky for those of us that already live with someone and are raising children together because in some ways we are already married. The fear of having something so good suddenly change would make anyone think twice about marrying someone but i think that you’re absolutely correct. Communication is Key. Thanks for the awesome article. Keep ’em coming!

87. “…or you may wake up and realize you’re living someone else’s life…”

    *hums*

    And you may ask yourself
    How do I work this?
    And you may ask yourself
    Where is that large automobile?
    And you may tell yourself
    This is not my beautiful house!
    And you may tell yourself
    This is not my beautiful wife!

    (same as it ever was…)

88. This is me right now. Together for 8.5y, married 10m and planning a divorce- or as we like to call it “moving forward”. There are a lot of things that went into this situation, some that have been discussed like pressure on long term committed couples and differing expectations of marriage as well as an honest look at “forever”. It’s not something anyone could every plan for.

89. I think that also, a lot of times couples like this think that marriage HAS to be the next natural step since they’ve been together so long. So they get married, realize they really haven’t liked each other for like the past 5 years, and do what they should have done about one year in – they split! That freaks me out too 🙂

90. It is a strange coincidence that this was just posted. I broke up with my husband yesterday. We were married only two years, and together for 9 prior to marriage.

    Why we broke up? I believe I thought he would put more effort into our future after marriage, and he did not. I went in knowing who he was and his issues, but I am a highly optimistic person and I thought he would gradually improve. Instead, marriage made him even more complacent and he lacked any motivation to make something of himself or take the steps he needed to be a better husband, mentally. I am thrilled to now have a chance at a more positive future, but understandably still grieving the future I thought I would have with him.

    • I wish you (and all in similar situations) strength during such emotional and heavy times *hug*

91. The only thing that I disagree with in this article is the inference that hetero couples are the only ones that fall into “normative roles” after marriage. In my lesbian relationship we fell into normative roles, and in my current hetero marriage (after 7 years together prior to the wedding) we have avoided it. I guess all i’m saying is that no matter your sexual orientation you can always fall into a role that’s expected of you, it doesn’t just happen to heteros 🙂

92. I always wonder about this. It’s an odd thing that even my other half’s nan reported in her age group (50-70). I think we had an advantage because we had a long distance relationship so we had to perfect communication. Even now we live together we ‘check in’ as much as possible. It took a while for him to share his feelings without feeling ‘weak’ and for me to not hide my poor finances. But it has to be done 🙂 I love offbeat bride for articles like this.

93. Thank you for this article!
    My man-friend and I have been together for 9 years and we (and by that I mean mostly myself) are constantly asked about when we’re getting married. It will go from innocent-ish small talk to horrifically personal inquisition in only a few moments all because they are unsatisfied with the answer “we don’t want/need to”. Sure the source behind that answer is more complicated, but that’s none of their business. Honestly conversations about OTHER peoples expectations have started more arguments than our own expectations. I do wish that our state allowed het couples to register as domestic partners though… I feel like that option for any couple is important. Instead of married/not married.

    I would also like to see “Offbeat Wife” written… Hopefully it’s in progress. 🙂

94. We’re still working our way towards divorce and it’s a messy and difficult process, even when the goal is to remain friends after the marriage is dissolved. Having spent 10 years together it’s hard for many people to imagine that we are divorcing and our friends and families reactions have often been to distance themselves or over-worry for us. Sometimes it seems we are the only “grown-ups” in this whole process.

95. 7 years is the breaking point of most relationship/marriages. “The seven year itch.” I agree that most people think marriage is going to change thing or make things better. The only thing to do is communicate.

    • I’m not sure about other countries, but in Australia the average length of a marriage/long term relationship is 12 years. It’s gone up in the last 10 years or so but people still call it “7 year itch” 🙂

96. I can see how old this post is…but it’s still going so I’m just going to add my thoughts. My husband and I have been together just over 12 years and married just over 2. We’ve been together since we were barely 16, we got engaged at barley 21 (5 years together) and married at (almost) 26 (10 years together). And we are fine…we think that getting married was just a formality. We were already married in the commitment sense; lived together, travelled overseas, bought cars together, planned our whole future together (and that we were doing at 16). I think people who are together a long time and then get married and then split up seem to think that marriage will change things. We tell people all the time, that we were just as committed before our wedding, we still had the same goals/path in mind for our shared future before our wedding. The ONLY thing our wedding changed was now I wear 2 rings and have a different last name (and you don’t even have to change that). People kept asking us just after our wedding “How’s married life?”. We’d respond “Exactly as it was before the wedding”. It didn’t change anything for us. It was just a formality. Marriage is just a piece of paper (if you’re doing it right before hand; you’re already committed to each other). You can be committed and in love for all your lives and never get married and that should be just as valid. The mind set of ‘things should be different now your ‘married” is a bit silly. I tend to think things should be great between you before you get married. Why get married if you were wishing things between yourself and your partner were different? Shouldn’t you be already be happy and content with him and your relationship. Why marry someone your even slightly unhappy with? Just the way I feel…

97. For me, I think things just stagnated. Once we were married, we had no other level to progress to in our relationship and I realized I was bored. I had gotten so caught up in the thought of getting engaged and then married and then suddenly I felt like “is this it?” When I looked at my husband, I realized I was only really interested in him as a friend, and outside the context of constant progression, there was nothing really there. I was complacent and bored. My husband was a wonderful person, don’t get me wrong, but he wasn’t what I needed romantically. Sadly, it took until the dust settled to realize it.

    • Rhiannon I can really relate to what you’ve said. In fact I am reading this forum as I am currently struggling with how to deal with my sudden but subconsciously not-so-sudden realistion that I don’t want to be with the man I’ve been with for the past 9 years, and who I married last year. I think it really took being married for me to realise, and I just never thought this would happen. I’m dreading the logistics of breaking up (i.e. dropping the bombshell on our close families and closer group of coupled-up friends) as much as I am anything else. Can I ask – how did it all go down for you?

    • Megan, not sure if you can read this because I can’t find your reply, but we were very lucky. We were still very good friends and because we were honest with each other and were able to realize together that this wasn’t working, everything was very amicable. We decided to tell our family all at once in an email so we didn’t have to say the same things over and over again. We explained that we were still friends, but that romantically we weren’t compatible and we each needed different things. I know that this isn’t the way things normally go down, but I think being open and trying to work things out is key, rather than just blaming or being closed to discussion. I also suggest a marriage counselor; they can be really good at helping everyone understand the root cause of issues.

98. As a divorced woman, I can lend the perspective of when you get married is just as important as who you marry. I got married to someone I dated all throughout college and graduate school right at the beginning of my professional career. Nothing could have prepared me for the fallout of my career taking off while his didn’t. It upset the power dynamic of equality in our relationship, and emasculated him. While money and status had never been important to me, they mattered to him. Instead of viewing us as a team with cumulative wins, he became mean and withdrawn, eventually resorting to physical abuse, no matter how “good” (read submissive gender role) wife I tried to be to diminish my accomplishments.

    I’m now with someone with similar ideas of what’s important in egalitarian relationship. Way smoother sailing since we had separate, established identities before we got together, and our relationship complements rather than defines us.

99. I wish I had read this before and during the beginning of my relationship that just ended with my ex….

100. Well with much more men and women Cheating a lot more than ever is a very good reason why many marriages are failing today as i speak, and years ago most marriages did last very long like our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles did.

101. I recently had to delay my wedding for another year due to financial considerations (well, as in we are doing most everything ourselves for financial reasons, and we’ve realize that we just won’t have time to do the things we want to do in a few months, vs a year and a half). The thing I really liked about this article is that it reminded me of the value to having a long engagement. I used to feel like long engagements were silly (I was really judgemental in my youth, alas), because if you know you want to get married, why the hell would you need to wait, blah blah, you’re only taking that much time because you’re trying to plan some over-the-top pretentious wedding, blah blah…you get the idea. I know, I was a bit of an ass!
     But the thing no one tells you about the upside to a long engagement is that it gives you time to purposefully prepare for MARRIAGE. Obviously, (well, hopefully!) when you get engaged, that means that you both feel ready for and excited about marriage and til death and all that. But in my experience, it becomes very different once you’re engaged, because you’re no longer thinking theoretically about the kind of marriage you would want, and if you would want to marry this person, etc, because you’re already barreling towards making that a reality! So amen to the “talk lots” and making sure your desires and expectations for marriage can coexist in the SAME marriage.

102. [email protected]

103. I think the issue for many couples is that before they get engaged, they’re just dating so there’s no motivation to have these discussions and reflect on their relationship and expectations. The longer that goes on, it just becomes the status quo or a habit, which is then difficult to dig out of.
     However, couples who reflect on their relationship and expectations together early in dating are far more likely to last.

104. Hi

     Thanks for th excellent read. There’s something that I don’t understand though. Wouldn’t a couple who have been together for two years only, also have differing expectations about what marriage is about? And therefore be equally susceptible to their marriage failing in the same way that a recently married couple that dated for way more than only two years does?

     If that’s true then I still don’t understand why so many people who dated for ten get so quickly divorced after marriage.

105. My husband and I got married in April 2015, and the year and a half before the wedding was without question the worst time in our 7 year relationship. We went through a crazy time where I was dealing with health issues that totally consumed me + we had a change in our financial situation + we were dealing with tons of the usual family drama associated with wedding planning. We almost sought counseling but ultimately decided not to. This might sound bad in light of all the talk about the benefits of communication, but we didn’t feel like we were in an emotional place where we could get into that really deep stuff together with a professional and grow from it.
     In comparison, the year after the wedding has been a breeze. In some ways I think it is good that we went through a rough time before getting married. It really calmed some of my commitment fears because I feel like we entered marriage better prepared for future challenges.
     My close friend on the other hand had a great year before marriage and a horrible first year of marriage, the total opposite of my experience and also very situational, and I know she considered divorce just a few months after getting married. Luckily things are going a little better for them now. Every relationship is so different and maybe when a crappy year happens to be the first year of marriage, it is harder to fight through it.

106. As a couples counselor and sex therapist I see mainly two roots to this problem. A) the above mentioned lack of talk about core values and B) the expectations we are told to have by society.
     Expecting our partner to be our lover, best friend, best person, best lay, best kisser and life to be forever perfect is absolutely ridiculous. It can only cause pain and stress. Just because you signed a paper and wear rings, doesn’t mean you will be magically transformed!
     I actually propose counselling before the wedding. Let someone help you figure out the rules, the dos and don’ts for you relationship. Lay down your goals as a couple and as individuals. Make a five year plan together.
     This will help you feel safer and better to talk before than to pick up the pieces after.
     P.s. “Forever” is a pretty long time to fake orgasms, if 5 Minutes of explaining can do the trick.

     • | That might be the best “p.s” I’ve ever read in my life. Amen!

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