I just wanted to clarify: I said we have occasional fights. What we actually have is slightly emotional disagreements. We never shout or call names. We just talk about differences or frustrations. Usually we get everything settled within about half an hour.
Ugh, how utterly sad and depressing… NutMagnet, do you think there is any way to repair things? Marriage counseling? Sounds like you both are stubborn and bitter. If you could just both agree to try, to start over with a clean slate, and see if there is any love left worth saving? After all, you did say: “I was mad about her. I would have given her the moon.” There’s gotta be something there…
I swear to God, every time I read one of your posts I think we must have been separated at birth! This is exactly what my husband and I did. We talked about the realities of living life with another person, not just the mushy stuff. We were together two years before we lived together, lived together for two years before we married, and just celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last month. We’re crazy about each other. We’re in love, and also incredible friends and companions. Compromising on things doesn’t bother us because we know that that’s what it takes to keep the relationship healthy, and we’d do just about anything to keep the relationship healthy.
Of the people I’m related to and the people I know who are married (or living with a partner so long-term they may as well be), I’d say something like 25% are truly happy/content, while the other 75% are waiting to see if they’ll keep on hangin’ in there or end up in divorce court.
While trying to look up info on how marriage affects long term happiness and the contentment of arranged vs. western marriages I came across this from psychology today.
http://cms.psychologytoday.com/search/search.cgi?q=marriage+happiness
Some of those articles look pretty interesting and I wont get to read them all, they still look like good reads though especially on this thread.
Thanks for that Wesley Clark.
As a quick summary, it breaks down like this:
65% Unhappy
18% Moderately Satisfied
17% Very Satisfied
That is a pretty bleak picture. That is taken from the first article if you want to read it yourself. All of the articles look interesting.
Married 26 years, and happy and getting happier. We knew each other for 5 years before getting engaged, never lived together, in fact never lived closer than 600 miles apart, but after many breakups decided we couldn’t live without each other. We could have made a fortune betting our friends that we’d still be married after ten years. 
No marriage is happy all the time. Sometimes there is lots of stress, sometimes there are things pulling you apart. We both agree about money, we both nag ourselves about chores more than the other, and we are damned compatible. In fact, we’ve found that we are happier the more we are together, especially on vacations. Youngest kid goes to college in August (yippee!) and we’re looking forward to it.
According to that survey:
That makes 5,127 couples where both partners where happily married and 16,374 where at least one partner was unhappy. I did the math, and it looks like only 23.8% of these marriages were happy.
As for me, I’ve been married for 22 years and am not happy. My husband is, and I’m not. Of the nine marriages in my immediate family, I’d say six are (or were) unhappy. From my experience, I think 25% is a pretty good guess.
I know only perhaps two or three couples that are happy. I’m single and 19, so I really don’t have much personal experience, but if my parents were the only example I had, I think I’d join a nunnery. My parents are even married, but they’ve been together, off and on, since ~1973. They hate each other. They get into screaming fights, my mother throws things and threatens my father, both physically and emotionally and they never, ever, ever show the slightest bit of love for each other. And they are so disfunctional that they blame us for it. You see, my father is conspiring with me against my mother and he always takes my side (which he rarely, if ever, does) when my mother is screaming at me for something I didn’t do. And my father told me that if I didn’t exist, he would be happy because he could have left my mother and run off with the woman he was having an affair with. Mind you, at the time, my brother was 8, I was four and my little sister (who I never met as she was taken away from my parents) was a newborn.
And I know peopel with worse marriages.
10% sounds about right.
Married twenty-six years, and happy. My sister and brother-in-law 25 years and happy. My brother-in-law and wife, twenty-six years and happy. My sister-in-law, four marriages, three divorces. Other sister-in-law, on second marriage. Neither of her marriages, from what I could see were happy, but I think that’s because she doesn’t have happiness in her.
After reading everyone’s posts, it seems that chance plays a heavy role in whether you end up in a happy marriage or not. Yes, it helps to plan wisely before you get married and there are always choices that are made after marriage (such as children and career) that determines how a marriage will end up. But it sure helps to be lucky in finding the right person in the first place and to not have to face ill fortunes such as job loss/relocation, illness, financial strains, etc. As for me, count me in the happily married camp (over 20 years).
Count me in among the “keep realistic expectations when you’re dating” crowd. It’s easy to admire someone while you’re in heavy adulation, but for marriage, you have to remember that your feelings for someone are going to cool over time. If you cannot respect your partner only as a friend, then your marriage is doomed to failure. On the other hand, if you can honestly say to yourself, “I’m not madly in love with XXX, but I definitely respect and like him/her because of YYY and ZZZ,” then you’re in much better shape to have a long marriage once the flames of passion wear off.
I blame Harlequin Romance novels for folks having unrealistic expectations of what a long-term marriage entails. 
DeHusband and I have been married for 10 years. No kids. Blissfully happy. Well, blissfully happy now.
We had to adapt to each other. Marriage terrified me. I was raised to never trust a man. “You may want a man, but you dont need one.” DeHusband was also raised to feel it was better to not marry. “If you can’t have children, why marry?”
When we married, I was 25; DeHusband was 34. We were both entirely self-sufficient. Because of our fears, we had counciling before the wedding. Best thing we ever did. We already knew marriage was hard; we learned it was not impossible. And that it was worth fighting for. Very soon after the wedding, I became physically dependent on him and he lost his job. Big changes. Huge. But we got through them. And each year has brought more changes. And we adapt.
Life together is not easy. But it doesn’t have to be, because we are strong enough to take it. He’s my best friend and I’m his. We still have outside friends and we don’t try to get in the way of that. My best friend is a single man; but DeHusband trusts me and it’s not a problem. His mother hates me but I encourage him to spend his vacation days with her. We are independent, but we choose to be together.
Hmmm, having been married to the LIONsob for going on 27 years now
I can say that I am happily married ** * MOST ** * of the time.
Nobody, married or single that I have ever known is 100% happy, 100% of the time. That is not even a realistic expectation IMHO.
People change with time, so do marriages. The truth of the matter is that all relationships have ups and downs, good and bad. You have to take it all and work with what you have everyday. It is not my job to make the LIONsob happy every minute of everyday nor is it his to make me happy all the time.
I know from a year and a half separation we had 19 years ago that I am happier with him in my life than without him, and I do mean HIM, not just any man but HIM. Since he is still here (and we have no minor children and no property to speak of) I believe him when he says he is happy too.
I’ve never been married, but ten of the twelve married couples I know appear to be at least content (if not outright pleased, generally speaking), one couple appears to be content at the very least, and one couple is separated & looking to divorce.
That’s not to say that the happily married couples don’t have squabbles; every couple has disagreements. However, they’re happy more often than not. Hence, it appears to me that most married couples are actually happy.
Weird.
Happy. Married. Two year old twin boys. Married almost 9 years, together 12, known each other for 15.
Here’s the deal. Marriage to a companion doesn’t always HAVE to be lurvely. To believe so is crazy. The best you can hope for is to marry someone who respects you and who you respect. That respect means to continue working on the relationship, always put them ahead of external influences (work, money, infidelity). If you both feel that way, I guarantee that there will be more happy than bad.
Am I blissfully exstatically honeymoon happy? No. Do I realize that cheating on her would be the Absolute Stuipidest Thing I’ve Ever Done Ever? Yeah.
She is my best, closest friend, and I love her madly for it. I sure wish life were a little less COMPLICATED tho’.
50% of marriages end in divorce; I will define all of those as unhappy.
50% do not end in divorce. From what I’ve seen, of those, perhaps 1/4 (at most) are “happy.” My guess is closer to 10-15%. The majority are probably “indifferent to mediocre” and a good number of them “unhappy to miserable.”
So that leaves us with about 5-8% of all marriages being happy or positive for both partners. And I must say that 8% sounds incredibly high to me, based on my experience.
I personally think this is the fault of the people who get married, and societal attitudes about marriage, and not the institution of marriage itself. I think many people get married because of societal expectations or unrealistic ideas about marriage, when, in truth, most people are not cut out for marriage. (Not for one that’s good for both partners, anyway.)
It is also my view (based on experience) that while men complain about marriage being a burden, they generally get most of the benefits of marriage. Women, who are usually so eager to get married, suffer most of the burdens.
Of course, my views on this are warped. I am the product of a marriage that’s now 37 years long, that looks wonderful and successful to outsiders, but is in actuality extremely twisted and abusive. My family looks like the American dream from the outside. So I have the tendency to assume that every marriage/family that looks good is probably rotten inside.
Unfortunately, I’m usually proven right.
I’m a lawyer, so I look at it this way: one boilerplate contract is obviously not going to work for every single couple. Especially one with such draconian terms: “for the rest of our lives, just you and me, no matter what happens.” Obviously, this is going to work well only for a small minority of couples. Then heap on the “implied terms” in the contract, like, “you’re going to live together all the time, and be responsible for some kids, and put up with each other’s relatives, and share finances, and chores, and pretty much every other detail of each other’s lives.”
It’s the toughest possible scenario for any romantic couple, and it’s forced on us as “the norm.” Of course it doesn’t work for most people.
27, female, never married, never will be. I don’t even want a long-term romantic relationship, for the same reasons (too much like marriage).
It would take a VERY special person to change my mind about this. I am not holding my breath.
For what it’s worth, here are some stats of myself and family.
Me/1st wife - unhappily married. Lasted all of about 10 months after we were wed. Terrible time.
Me/2nd wife - 13 years into the relationship, 8 of it married. We talk all the time, make each other laugh and have an active sex life. We are really good friends and I see us together for a very long time.
My father/mother - I think their first years were good but by the time I was 4 it got ugly. They were divorced several years later.
My wifes father/mother - going on 50 years I think. They are quite happy and a pleasure to see together.
My brother and his wife - I’m blown away these two have lasted as long as they have. Something like 15 years now I think. She is the spawn of the devil, a total bitch. I fully expect him to murder her while she sleeps.
My wifes sister - Shes on her 4th marrage in 20 years. I don’t think I need to speculate where this last one is heading.
My wifes other sister - They’ve been married for some time but I would be hard pressed to speculate they’re happy. He’s greedy and won’t allow her to spend “his money” on something as simple as a new coffee maker. We gave her our old coffee grinder because her wouldn’t let her buy one. The thing is, they’re loaded. They have a new house on several acres, a sailboat, three nice cars. He’s a pilot for a major airline. He can afford a coffee maker. Sad really.
My wifes brother - very happily married for about 25 years. They make a great team and are very good together.
So out of 11 marrages, 3 are going well. The others ended or are not a picture of bliss.
Outsiders also thought my parents’ marriage was idyllic, which was not the case at all. They finally divorced after 3 kids and 24 years, but we would have all been better off if they had parted earlier. My brother divorced just this year. I’m getting some of the details from my sister (happily married) now, and it’s a sorry tale.
As for myself, I’ve been married for 12 years and am lucky to have found probably one of the few women in the world who could put up with me.
In my experience, it’s the long marriages that always turn out to have been incredibly twisted. I can’t count the number of couples I’ve known, usually parents of friends, who looked totally normal on the outside. Then, one day, they got divorced, and BOOM, the dirty awful secrets come out.
To assume that long marriages mean the couple is necessarily happy is a huge mistake. I can’t say why unhappy couples stay together, but I think inertia, fear, and lack of imagination have a lot to do with it.