I have some questions for those of you who are or have been married. It’s part of a Health class assignment. If I could get at least 5 of you folks to answer, it would help me out a lot. Here are the questions:
How long have you been/were you married, roughly?
What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together?
How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship?
What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship?
How and when has your relationship changed over the years?
What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future?
Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why?
Hoo boy! Don’t ask anything deep or anything. :rolleyes:
Here goes:
1. How long have you been married? Just over 3 years.
2. What is the most important thing to keep a marriage together? You’re likely to get wildly diverging views on this, but for me and Mrs. Rastahomie it has been our relationship with God.
3. How do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? Err, that’s a tough one. Usually we just talk it out and try to compromise. Not a very elaborate answer, but that’s the best I can give.
4. What is the biggest stressor in your relationship? Two words: money. We’ve never had any.
5. How has your relationship changed over the years? We’ve both matured quite a bit, and we’ve learned to accept and appreciate one another’s idiosyncracies. For example: when we first got married, Mrs. Rastahomie was appalled and shocked that I couldn’t sleep without a fan. She would piss and moan about it every night. But nowadays she can’t sleep without a fan, either. hee hee hee
6. What challenges do you see for your relationship in the future? Well, first of all, we’re going to go around and around when we have kids, that’s for damn sure! I tend to thinks that parents these days are too free with their kids and that this country could use some more parents who are going to be strict. Mrs. Rastahomie, however, thinks kids should be allowed considerably more freedom than she was allowed when she was a kid, which, IMHO, was quite a bit.
7. Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Of course not. We can sit on our couch and talk for hours about how we’re going to rear our (as yet un-conceived) children, and we can reach compromises hear and there, but we can’t anticipate every situation that’s going to pop up.
One thing I’m seeing from the responses from you and others is that it appears that those who have been married less are more open in their relationships. It also seems that people who are active in forums like this are more open. I was thinking that this might be because we’ve been raised in a time where people have equal responsibility and involvement in the marriage. It could also be that I don’t have many responses from long-term marriages :).
How long have you been/were you married, roughly? Four years. Divorced.
What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? Communication. Love. Understanding.
How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? Much talking. Trying to see each others side.
What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship? Previous boyfriend. /Hers, I might add./ Selfishness.
How and when has your relationship changed over the years? Became less loving, more fighting, many suspicions and loss of trust.
What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future? Keeping her from cheating. /HA!/
Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why? Not after several years. Decided that I had given all I could, communication and understanding failed, she cheated repeatedly and the marriage failed.
1. How long have you been/were you married, roughly? Nineteen and a half years.
2. What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? Love (corny, but true). Each of us is as interested in the other’s happiness as in his/her own.
3. How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? Talk and compromise until both of us are reasonably happy with the resolution.
4. What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship? In the early days it was money or the lack of it. Now it’s the lack of time for each of us to do what he/she wants, singly or together.
5. How and when has your relationship changed over the years? It’s changed as we’ve grown. We’ve tended to change somewhat after major stresses, like losing jobs or deaths in the family. We generally have a major talk (or major fight), reassess what our goals in life are and how we hope to reach them, and go on from there. The births of our children also changed our marriage in innumerable ways, small and large. Having kids reinforced our bond at the same time it drastically decreased the amount of time we have to spend alone together.
6. What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future? When our children leave home, we’ll have to figure out how to live as just a couple again (and there are days I can hardly wait). We’re also likely to have to deal with more frequent health problems. It can be hard to be patient and loving with someone who’s in poor health, especially when you’re accustomed to being that person’s partner instead of his/her caretaker.
7. Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why? No, and I wouldn’t want to prevent them. All the challenges we’ve faced so far have been avenues for growth as individuals and as a couple, and as lousy as some of those challenges were, I wouldn’t change a thing about how we’ve turned out so far.
How long have you been/were you married, roughly?** Just over three years
2. What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? Being best friends first. We can talk to each other about everything and nothing.
3. How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? Compromise and discussion. Sometimes you just have to stop and ask yourself–Is this really that important?
4. What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship? Money, ideas about responsibility, and my neurosis.
5. How and when has your relationship changed over the years? Has become less spontaneous–mostly due to time constraints and differing schedules.
6. What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future? Children. We are going to have many conflicts over this, I have a feeling. I would like to discuss some of them now but he doesn’t think it is necessary yet.
7. Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why? Well, I would like to prevent them but, as I said, hubby is not big on discussing upcoming bridges–he prefers to ignore the bridge until he is right there at it.
How long have you been/were you married, roughly?
About 7 1/2 years.
What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? COMMUNICATION. Period. Paragraph.
How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship?
Verbally, we hash it out and thrash it out until we can FIGURE out what’s going wrong and how to fix it.
What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship?
Me sleepin’ around.
How and when has your relationship changed over the years?
It has gotten deeper and more loving; we are truly willing to tell each other absolutely anything.
What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future?
There’s absolutely no way of knowing. We have gotten through so much crap, there’s NO telling what else we’re going to have to get through…except raising our children, at the very least.
Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why?
Gods, no. If we were never challenged, our relationship would have no room for development and improvement. Stagnation = death.
Wow… That’s probably the best way of describing what makes a marriage successful… being best friends first. If you can’t be best friends, you can’t be husband and wife. Communication and tolerance. Thanks, evilbeth, that’s the best way it could have been said.
I wish I could use my current relationship to answer these but we’re not married yet. Guess I have to use my 1st husband. Here goes…
1. How long have you been/were you married, roughly?
1.) A little over 2 years. Divorced
2. What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? What I have in my current relationship is communication, respect, trust, and lots of love. I didn’t have any of that with my first marriage.
3. How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? I would try to talk about things, he would yell and throw things and get drunk and pass out on the couch. There was no communication because he would get angry at every little thing I did or said and I was scared of what he would do to me so I quit talking to him entirely.
4. What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship? Mostly the fact that I wasn’t in love with him and he’s and alcoholic. Also the fact that I couldn’t talk to him about anything without him getting angry.
5. How and when has your relationship changed over the years? We dated for over 3 years and we partied a lot for the first 2 - 2.5 years of that. I became pregnant and we got married and I quit partying because I had a child to take care of. He kept partying and drinking more and more until it was a nightly ritual for him to drink a case of beer and pass out on the couch. His anger, depression and alcoholism was just too much to take. Plus I didn’t want my daughter to be old enough to remember seeing him that way. It wasn’t a good environment for her to be in.
6. What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future? We only talk about things concerning our daughter and only see each other when he comes to pick her up or drop her off. I think when she gets in school and has parent/teacher conferences and school plays and functions it’s going to be hard for us to be in the same room together. I’m engaged to someone else and this man is a HUGE part of my daughter’s life and he’ll be there for every school function and every teacher conference and I don’t think my ex is going to like that.
7. Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why?
I think it’s up to him to come to terms with my relationship/upcoming marriage and realize that this man’s going to be our daughter’s father figure when he’s not with her. Who knows, maybe by the time she’s in school my ex will have somebody and he’ll understand where I’m coming from.
Most important? Friends first, then the confusing stuff. Also respect and appreciation of each other.
Deal with conflict? Ha ha, fight like crazy sometimes, not good but we are working on it.
Biggest stressor? Money, my insecurity, his fucking mother.
Relationship changed? We are more mature people, birth of the child changed the way we look at things, there is something much bigger than just us now!
Challenges? Keeping our heads together to raise this little person, without getting caught up in our own shit.
Preventing challenges? Don’t prevent challenges, use them as an opportunity to work on something that needs changing (sounds touchy-feely, but it works).
1. How long have you been/were you married, roughly?
7 years. ( Known each other going on 13 years)
**2. What is/was the most important thing to keep a marriage together? **Having common interests and goals.
( I’m driving him to the mad house while he’s driving me to the poor house. We are a two house family.) A sense of humor and perspective about the whole ball of wax also helps too.
3. How did/do you deal with and solve conflict in your relationship? He likes to talk it out. I like to hold it in until it festers. Ying-Yang. Talking to the dog works much better because the mutt doesn’t try to resolve anything (that will never go away anyways.)
4. What is/was the biggest stressor throughout your relationship? He is a good kind soul who likes to help people and is extraordinarily handy at all kinds of repair and construction jobs. Friends and family take advantage of his good nature and because of this, it takes away time from his family and me. It’s my job to be the bad cop. Oh, that and who ate the last of the nachos.
**5. How and when has your relationship changed over the years? ** Like our waistlines, it has expanded.
**6. What challenges do you see/did you see for your relationship in the future? ** Raising kids. Deciding if I should re-join the real world when the kids are back in school.
7. Do you feel you can prevent these challenges? Why? Nope. Already had the kids.
Let me reiterate #6. It sounds as if having kids has been a mistake. The biggest challenge for us, other than kids, taxes and mowing the lawn will be taking care of our parents in their old age.
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