How was your first year of Marriage? Salad Days or Hell?

In My Humble Opinion
41

We got married in our late 20’s. Very much in love, but not compatible as we later came to learn.

Rule #1 - If you fight on the honeymoon, there could be some underlying issues. For example: Never, under any circumstances, say something like: “I’m sorry you got a painful UTI from doing it in the pool a couple of days ago - But UTI or not, that shouldn’t preclude you from giving me some head”.

Rule #2 - Hold off having kids until you’re damn good and ready. Even if most of the friends you have already popped a few out - that doesn’t mean you have to keep up with the Jones’.

All in all, it was a good first year: It had alot of very high highs and very low lows. It wasn’t until about year #4 things started to sour. We stuck it out for 6 years and finally called it quits.

42

We’ve been married for almost a year now, and it’s been wonderful. We were togther for 4 years and lived with each other for a year before getting married, which I think definitely made for a smoother transition into married life.

Very, very true. There have been times when I’ve actually thought, “Am I going to spend the next 50 years putting this man’s dirty laundry into the hamper?” I’ve had to learn to deal with things one day at a time and not project too far into the future. After all, I also get to spend the next 50 years laughing at this man’s corny jokes and eating his wonderful cooking.

43

The first year we were married we spent in different countries. I arrived in the states to be with him 4 days before our first anniversary. So, uh, that was tough. Not pleasant at all. Much stress and tears.

The first year we were together also doesn’t go down in memory as our finest. I was newly arrived in the country, had no friends or family here, set down in a college town with crappy public transport, no money, no job and nothing to do. And his friends were all music geeks and there were a total of two of them who were capable of talking about anything other than music. Most social events we went to people would ask what instrument I play, and when I said I wasn’t a musician, would say “oh.” and walk off.

It was miserable. I was lonely and felt like I was a screw-up and a burden for being unhappy. My depression kicked in and my husband was out of his depth dealing with it. I had no insurance and was too deep in the pit of despair to figure out the free or cheap healthcare options. I was competing with PhD students for secretarial jobs. (A foreign bachelor’s degree was not very impressive.)

He felt like he was failing me because I came out to join him and was just not coping. His grad studies were sucking him dry, the school was using him for as much low-paid TA labour as they could get out of him. We spent a lot of time just driving out of town because there was nothing else to do, and on the same stretch of road, every single time, he’d bring up how unhappy he was with his graduate program.

Eventually I got a data entry job, and it was good money for the town we were in. We were going to move into a two bedroom apartment, and even in the same apartment building as one of the two people I considered a friend by that point. At which point my husband got accepted into a flaky experimental computer science program in an expensive East Coast city. I was absolutely terrified and furious that after I’d finally managed to get my foot in the door and start to earn us a comfortable living he wanted us to up and move. But I thought long and hard, and decided to roll with it. Best decision I could have made. We moved right around our second anniversary, and although it was really tough surviving in the big city on basically nothing, we moved right in the middle of the tech boom and I picked up a job very quickly.

We will have been married six years this July. I have to agree that to some extent inertia (how the heck was I going to leave him when I travelled all the way across the world and went through bureaucratic nightmares to be with him?) that kept me from walking out during the first year we were in the same country. But also I really did want to make it work, forever, and so did he. And I think we both felt that it was worth sticking out the tough stuff for an undefined amount of time in anticipation that the reasons we married each other in the first place would eventually shine through. I still remember the most hurtful thing that he said to me that year, he hates that I remember it, but I can think about it and laugh now because we got through that, and if we got through all of that, we can get through 'most anything.

44

My Queen and I were just talking about this in the car the other day. I asked her to marry me a little after a year of dating, and we were wed a year later. Our third anniversary will be here in just a few weeks.

Our first year started as if it were going to be the best yet. We were newlyweds, we had purchased a home with two of our friends (our best man and maid of honor, as a matter of fact) a few months earlier and had moved to the suburbs. We were making a lot of money and were able to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Life was really comfortable, and we were quite happy.

Three months after our wedding I was laid off from my job. At the time, I was actually very excited about it. We had talked about my leaving for some time, as I was dissatisfied with my company. When my dot-com job dried up after our engagement it didn’t take any time to find a new gig.

Three weeks after I lost my job 9/11 happened, and nobody was hiring. I easily sent out a hundred resumes, and couldn’t get interviews anywhere. We were living off my wife’s income and raiding my retirement accounts to keep our heads above water. I took a job as a courier, which ended up putting about ten thousand miles on our new car in the space of a couple of months.

My arm had been swollen for some time; it limited my range of motion but didn’t hurt. I didn’t have health insurance at the time, and the symptoms matched those of a rotator cuff injury; nothing urgent, nothing that couldn’t wait until I had a job and benefits again.

A few days after Christmas I felt a pop in my right arm when I shifted gears in our car. Ten to fifteen minutes later I felt very nauseas. We decided to bite the bullet and went to the emergency room.

I still remember the look on my wife’s face when the doctor showed us the films from the x-ray. She’s a veterinary technician, and she immediately knew what was wrong. My bone looked like a sponge. The cancer had made my arm brittle enough to break from shifting gears.

The next month was a whirlwind. A family member who lives in Florida and works for a doctor was able to make us appointments with people willing to see us without insurance. Our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple was spent holding hands while I had my second chemotherapy (I wore a red bandanna for the occasion).

For our first anniversary, we were able to scrounge together enough money to spend the weekend at a lodge in the Georgia mountains. It was the first pleasure trip we had taken since our anniversary. My paper anniversary gift to her was a small book of quotes about love and marriage that I had put together in my spare moments. It’s sitting on her nightstand right now.

The cancer is gone now - two years on my birthday in May. It took eighteen months to find a new job, but I couldn’t have been hired to work with a better group of people. The medical bills are staggering, but we’re making headway.

What did we take away from our first year? We can survive anything. My wife has seen me at my absolute lowest, depressed from being broke, losing my hair from the meds, working twelve hours a day for a quarter of my previous salary. I’ve seen my wife’s strength, never missing a doctor’s appointment, cheering me on before each interview, scrimping together enough money to treat ourselves to Chinese takeout.

I found my best friend, my life’s companion and my favorite playmate. We both believe we have a marriage stronger than others who have been together ten times as long. It was a high price to pay, but we both believe it was worth it.

45

14 years in June.

Our first year was great. We had to work out a few minor details - I wanted him to be with me constantly and he needed some space, but we learned to compromise.

We were very honest and real with each other while dating before we got married, and we each really knew the other person by the time we married. We worked through some hard issues ahead of time.

Our harder times have come later as the circumstances of life have become more complicated - job losses, children, family, health problems… but we’re committed to working through each thing, no matter how hard, and we come out much stronger afterward.