You have been married for a year or two now and you are starting to realize that marriage isn't exactly what you thought it would be. You envisioned endless movie nights curled up in bed cuddling, countless romantic dinner dates, and of course a few mandatory passionate and aggressive fights that end in all consuming sex something like what was conveyed on the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Married and then what?
You have been down the aisle and are into the house or apartment and sporting that ring proudly, but suddenly you find that marriage is not at all what you expected.
It is far more boring and stressful, and far less romantic and intimate. This is not unusual, and was as backed up by Leon F Seltzer Ph.D. who noted in Psychology Today, that "[Marriage] frankly, might get rather boring over time."
I'm not saying that you can't have an amazing marriage, on the contrary, I think you can and I have some pretty good lessons learned from my own to help you out in that department. It always looks like you get married and then everything is smooth sailing from there on. That is so not the case.
Once the magic has faded and reality sets in, you start to realize that you don't see each other near as much as you thought you would even though you live together now, and when you do see each other it is way too easy to be fractious.
Author Arielle Ford mentioned in her new book "What to do if the Magic has Faded," that perhaps "reality has not quite lined up with your expectations" and fractious relationships can be quite a surprise.
The very best thing you can do is to pretend that is the first time you've seen your new spouse in weeks and appreciate everything about them every moment - or at least pretend to.
I would say a good eighty percent of the time you argue it isn't even about anything.
Life is stressful and chaotic and most of it comes from outside of your relationship (hopefully), and bringing it into your marriage will only harm your sacred union. The other thing is that these days, divorce is so widely accepted and so quick to happen, I feel like a good amount of marriages don't ever really have a decent chance to make it- especially when you marry young, which so many people these days do.
What can you do to ensure your marriage is not abortive?
So, you may be asking yourself what can I do to ensure that my marriage does not end up abortive. The mistakes that I have made in the first three years of my marriage almost destroyed it. I was quick to anger, I was jealous, I didn't trust the man I had vowed to give myself to for eternity, and I criticized everything he did. I was a terrible wife and honestly, I'm a lucky woman that he didn't walk away when things were at their worst.
However, the same types of things can be said for him, and we both stuck it out and vowed to keep our promise to stand by each other and support each other no matter how hard times got. I am so incredibly glad we did because we have made it past the rocky patches - at least the early ones - and even through rough times we can easily support each other and no one feels alone the way they once did.
So, the things that I have learned so far are that you should communicate your feelings, but not to the extent that it harms things or just leaves someone feeling bashed. You need to listen to your spouse, whether you want to hear the criticism or not - particularly if you don't want to hear it because that often means you need to.
You need to make the changes that are of the utmost importance to your partner, as long as they don't change who you are. You need to trust the one person in this world that you promised to trust. If they give you a reason not to trust them, then marriage counseling is an option or just discussing what happened and why and what can be done to reinstate the trust.
Marriage is a hard thing and it's the kind of hard thing that does get easier if you put in the effort, but it is always going to be work.
Divorce really should be a last resort, most things can be resolved if both parties want to be in the union bad enough. These days people don't like to work hard for anything, and sadly that includes their relationships and families. I am continuing to learn and grow and so is my husband, but we are far better off than we were one or two years ago. We will make it because our marriage is important enough to be our top priority.
