Yep, the difficulties we’ve been put through in the beginning bode well, I think, for the rest of the marriage.
Hopefully when everything gets sorted out, though, we’ll have something else to talk about !
I still got the ‘First Kiss Excited Tummy Fuzzies’, as mentioned in the “My Tummy is Fuzzy!” thread, and thats after 1.5 years. normally that disappears after the first month.
I can’t wait to be married to him! heeeee!
[sub](but not just yet honey!)[/sub] 
Oh please, doctordec. 10 solid years of screaming and raging without a break? Not a single good day? Get educated about menopause and grow up. Get counseling, get medical help. But don’t perpetuate a myth that menopause is what is destroying your marriage. Every week I spend time with a lot of couples who are going through, or have gone through the change, naturally or surgically, and I don’t see any of them bolting, or raging or screaming, either. It doesn’t have to be that way, and you can help change it without heading for the hills.
The married state is great, and love can endure many challenges. Let’s celebrate all these happy couples who have found out that secret.
I agree whole heartedly! The secret in my opinion to a lasting institution of marriage is simple fondness of your spouse. I love my spouse very much, as she loves me the same. But sometimes more importantly I LIKE my wife. We Like each other, and care about what the other is doing, and how well they are doing with it. liking someone, and loving someone is the key in my mind, and at my state of marriage.
Our 8th anniversary is next week. We’ve had some hard times (circumstances, not fighting), but it’s been more up than down and we’re very happy together. I love being married. May you be happy as well.
The magic number seems to be three years. If you are still enthused at that point, you’re probably home free. After three years with my first wife I was ready for a homicide/suicide deal. We managed to tough it out and remained married for another 17 years, but it was mostly hell.
Present spouse: 11 years now and can’t imagine being with anyone else.
Sometimes I think liking your spouse is more important than loving them.
I get frustrated by the number of people who are unhappily married and take joy from raining on my parade. I hear that ‘oh wait 1/5/10 years and see if you still say that’ comment more than I want to. I also wonder when it became vogue to complain that marriage sucks? Seems if you don’t go with that party line you’re an outcast. Sure has made it hard for me to make friends in my new town.
I’ve been married 7 years and we’ve been together 13 and are happier now than ever. We have enough in common that we’ve always something to chat about and enough different that we aren’t too sappy. I’m a stay home mom and he works from home so we are together every day and still manage to like eachother
Today is my five year anniversary, and I am MUCH more in love with my husband today than I was the day we married. When we married I knew that he loved me, and that he was funny, sweet, and dependable. Now I know that he is also a great provider, that he can stand up to the very tough times, that he is great at taking care of me when I’m sick or depressed, and that he is a wonderful father. I have great respect for him, and he tells me that he feels the same. I think we’ll make it. 
I can’t imagine being married.
I can’t imagine having someone else in my house, someone else im my bathroom, someone else in my bed. I will admit, however, that my experience and attitude is far from typical.
How do you successfully-married folks deal with argument and intense emotion? For that matter, how do you make sure that you trip over each other all the time?
(I always thought that intensely-emotional argument meant that the other person was out to destroy you, and that all words were literally meant. I have it on very good authority–that of my counselor–that this is not necessarily the case: that intense emotional argument can be communications. It’s take me a long time to start to learn to perceive the difference between the words that make up the form of an argument and its true contents… and I think there may more than one layer…)
I can only speak for myself… we’ve never had one of those intense arguments. I’ve seen my friends go through them and they don’t look like fun. I watched my parents do them and vowed that wouldn’t be me throwing furniture or standing in the street screaming over who was taking the children. When something bothers either of us we talk about it. Sometimes a curter tone is used but never yelling or swearing or any of that.
The most intense emotions have come when discussing my family. Not disagreements between us but me venting to him and him helping me through stuff. Lots of tears and introspection.
We don’t trip over eachother but we do trip over a lot of toys. I can’t imagine not having someone to come home to, to miss me when I’m gone, to share my day with and my bed, to be my friend all the time, to reach out and touch at 2:00am when I’m feeling down and to have coffee with each morning and dinner with each evening, to share my future and my dreams and my everything…
What do you mean by intense? We’ve never yelled or thrown things or had ‘big fights.’ When we disagree, we try to talk it out. We might not be too happy with each other, but we generally try to be honest and not to be purposely hurtful. Since I have a hard time talking about my feelings, our disagreements tend more towards silences while I try to figure out what I’m saying, rather than too many words thrown around.
How do we make sure that we don’t trip over each other all the time? It’s not a big deal for us; every once in a while I guess we get in each other’s way, but much more often we’re looking forward to getting the kids in bed so we can have a little quiet snuggle time. We love our children dearly, mind you, but they do take a lot of energy, and DangerGirl (age 3) is very easy indeed to trip over, since she has a habit of following you closely and of being very short and thus hard to see while cooking dinner.
Having him around all the time is great. He warms up the bed, he gets me drinks of water, we think the same things are funny…there are just zillions of little tiny things that make up a warm cozy marriage. It’s lovely, for us anyway.
Kittenblue…
Why did you think you were talking to an idiot ?
Counselling ? Yep, been there, done that. I learned how to cope.
It’s called PMDD. Ever hear of it ? It’s a real condition. Trust me, very real. I deal with it almost every day.
Medical help ? Yep, been there, done that. Ever hear of Sarafem ?
I pay for it every month. Read all about it.
http://www.sarafem.com/
Would you tell someone attending Alanon because of their spouse to “grow up” ? Would you tell someone dealing with a bipolar spouse to “grow up”?
I’ll restate my original opinion a bit differently. I believe that most married men aged 45 to 55 with a wife the same age and married for 20 years would admit under a polygraph test that marriage sucks.
Most don’t bolt but wish they could.
Hmm. Maybe I just haven’t seen enough of a sample of relationships to know how to make a good one without falling into the twin traps of (a) excessive emotional distance (like the family I grew up in) or (2) violent, loud, or heated arguments (like too many people I know, and also too many in my apartment building, especially just upstairs).
Thanks. Carry on, people.
Well, I can’t seem to stay married over 7 years at a time.
Judging by comments in other threads, I am not exactly the Lone Ranger around here when it comes to long-term relationship failures.
And yet, this thread is not full of “oh, just you wait a few years” posts. I would guess that is because those of us who cannot/have not been able to make it happen still connect romantically to your feeling and hope that YOU can make it work even though we could not.
At least, I do.
Alternately, we could all just be too drunk to type on New Year’s Eve.
I dont understand the need for marriage except for tax or beaurocratic purposes. Love is love. Marriage is … uh something virgin born Jesus would want me to do… I guess, and of course social pressure. Im 30 and I have watched a few of my friends get married and divorced. I feel no compulsion to marry my girlfriend. I like things the way they are and I dont think metal rings make a difference and/or saying stuff to a intermediary to a god I dont believe in, make a positive difference.
I love being married. My husband is my best friend. We’ve been married over 11 years. We’ve had some knock-down, drag-outs, and we still love/like each other afterward.
We don’t have metal rings, never have, but we do have a piece of paper that proclaims we are committed to each other, in sickness & health, rich or poor, 'til death do us part. I like that. Maybe it’s not for everyone.
I hope that we stay together forever, but no one can predict the future…we just try to get through together day by day, good or bad. Mostly good. It’s nice to know there’s a human there who’s my advocate, and my friend (with benefits) as we go through life.
Bluesman and I have been married for coming up on 17 years. We love each other intensely, but more important than that, we laugh together, all the time. More than anything else, being married is downright fun.
Oh, and Doctordec? All studies that have been conducted on marital happiness show that, in general, satisfaction increases dramatically for both partners in the years after 50. So I really think your impression is more a case of water seeking it’s own level, you know?
We’ve had “emotional conversations”, but neither of us are shouters. I think we’ve both internalized the “Don’t say you always/you never” rule, and we agree about practically everything anyway. We’re aware of and talk about continuing issues rather than avoiding them.
We’re both pretty good at dealing with each other’s moods, and being quiet together. We’ve been best friends for five years now, and we really enjoy each other’s company, especially being silly together.
I’m not sure where we learned any of it- neither my parents nor his Mum are any good at communicating and not shouting.
Been married 21 years. Marriage was the best thing that ever happened to me. My wife has made me a better man in every way.
As others have said, it just depends on the right combination of people. Married life isn’t for everyone, but it is for me. I seriously doubt though that ‘90% of guys would in their forties would opt out’. I have no doubt that some guys feel this way, but not most.
For those of you who are ‘giddy’ in your early years, as long as you don’t take your appreciation for each other for granted, I imagine that long-term happiness will be yours.
Good luck to you.
Ten years coming up. Happier than we’ve ever been. More in love, better friends, everything.