My wife and I obviously failed at it because we got a divorce not so long ago yet people that are in supposedly happy marriages keep saying that marriage takes a lot of work. I have no idea whatsoever what that means. We both had our roles and we did them.
I am not interested in hearing wishy-washy answers like “communicate”. Everyone should do that with coworkers and most family members. That isn’t work, that is simply opening your mouth and spouting off the truth just like you would do with anyone as a common courtesy as well as being a good listener. Splitting chores isn’t special work either. If you lived alone, you would have to do them all yourself anyway.
What is the “work” that people are keep talking about?
Perhaps “effort” is a better word to describe what people mean. You have to make a concious effort to get along, keep the peace, keep your relationship on an even keel. Living with another human adult, every day, can be difficult.
Yeah, maybe effort is the word. Choosing to act differently (better) than you naturally want to do–working as a team, putting the other person first, acting unselfishly, that sort of thing. If you both do that stuff, it works better.
Yes. For me, not almost the opposite, but – stating the necessary parts of the truth in a very diplomatic and caring manner – that is huge work. I usually fail at it, unfortunately. I’m trying to get better at it. I think it’s also “work” or “effort” to let things go. Let lots of things go. All the time. Choose battles. Take the high road. After all, the other party has to let things go all the time too. Maybe more than you do, but the things that YOU do aren’t annoying to you, so you don’t realize how much they’re letting them go. As my mother says, “Your mate’s flaws are the things that kept him/her from getting a better mate!” I think there’s work in other ways too – working on yourself – physically, emotionally – instead of letting yourself go.
Yes. The important part of communication is listening, not talking - and sometimes listening to what isn’t said also. That takes a lot more effort than flapping ones gums.
The other effort is not doing things your way all the time. That takes effort also.
:dubious: You doubt that there really is such a thing?
As for me, I think of marriage in some ways as being one rather large, ongoing exercise in culture shock. You have all the ways of living you’ve become accustomed to and have been quite happy with, and now suddenly you find yourself posted in a remote backwater foreign country called Marrigizstan. Once you first arrive in Marrigizstan, you’ll be charmed by the quaint local customs (taco night!) and different ways of doing things (tee hee, they actually arrange their CDs alphabetically here!) and colorful local characters (your father certainly has, um, an old school perspective on things, dear . . .).
That’s when you first visit. But try living there a year. Two years. Five years. Ten. You’ll find all the curious customs and folkways, once so charming, will be grinding on your soul. “God DAMN it, don’t you people know how to empty your pockets before throwing your jeans in the laundry basket?!”
People who go to other countries and “spout off truthfully” exactly what they think of the jerkwater province they find themselves in, are what we call “Ugly Americans” (or whatever nationality) and perhaps are better off going home. But if they can adjust, learn to laugh at themselves a bit and “go native” in a sense, they might end up having an immensely rewarding trip.
My parents were happily married for 60 years. Of course they had arguments, but they worked at it.
I think there’s more to a successful marriage than just doing your ‘role’.
Communication isn’t just ‘spouting the truth’.
There are times when you say nothing (because your spouse isn’t ready to talk).
There are times when you have to compromise. (A lot of times.)
There are times when nothing needs to be said, because you know your spouse so well.
There are times when you must say something, even though you haven’t been asked to.
I live alone. I don’t do washing up, laundry, cooking or gardening.
I pay people to do these things. That means I can say exactly how I want them done.
In a marriage, there would undoubtably be differences of opinion over how to do chores, when to do chores and why chores need to be done.
The work people are talking about is making compromises reasonably cheerfully and not getting wound up at the fact that your spouse does things in **totally incomprehensible and completely stupid **ways.
On one hand, I totally agree with you: I think picking the right person is the absolute most important step in a happy marriage, and if you’re constantly having to remind yourself that marriage is a lot of work, you might be with the wrong person. That said, I have a few thoughts on the issue.
There are three entities in a marriage: the 2 people involved, and the marriage itself, which is the relationship those people have with each other. The marriage is the sum of all the expectations, patterns, and habits of the two people: how you talk to each other, how you treat each other, how you relate to each other. Any 2 people could have between them any number of different relationships, and all too often, the relationship that develops is an accident, a kluge, an organic, feral mish-mash that is simply allowed to grow however it wants without any attention or shaping.
People often focus totally on the other person and not on the relationship they want to have with that person–it’s less interesting, for one thing, and many people think the relationship is inevitably shaped by the person themselves. But I have found is that a marriage is like a garden, and while certain things are set by the seeds you have at hand (the people involved), it can grow in all sorts of ways.
To me, then, the work of a marriage is that shaping and trimming. It’s not hard work, but it’s constant: you’ve got to be thinking about the marriage on a pretty consistent basis, analyzing how it works, watching how it’s growing and evaluating whether you like how it’s going and deciding what to do to shift and guide it. This ought not be tedious work: if it feels like drudgery, something’s really off.
I thought of an example of what I am talking about: for my husband, an important part of a relationship is not being in charge of reassuring anyone–he finds it demeaning to all involved, and annoying as hell. For me, at that point in my life, I thought a big perk to having a boyfriend was that you had someone to make you feel better about yourself. But he never did–when I was whiney or fishing for compliments, he never gave them. It took a lot of Long Boring Talks About Our Relationship before we got that straightened out, and the “self-reliance” section of our relationship is larger than I would ever, at the beginning, have thought it would be–but we are both much happier, I think. Now, with some people, a self-reliance section as large as ours would never work–again, the person you start out with really matters–but it was in no way automatic that we would be like we are. We had to work it out.
The other mistake people often make, IME, is that they have an image in their heads of what a marital relationship is like–cobbled together from their parents and the media, mostly–and they expect their own marriage to be like that regardless of the person they marry and, most interestingly, regardless of what they even like–it’s a weird sort of fatalism. People don’t realize that anything is negotiable, from monogamy to children to which side of the bed you sleep on, but these things have to be hashed out and decided–and, again, that hashing out and later maintaining is the work of relationships.
I don’t like to apply the term “work” to a relationship. I think you need to remember that you cannot always do things exactly the way you want. Compromise is essential if you want the relationship to function smoothly. If you’re the only one compromising, then something’s amiss. It should be give and take. If you can’t compromise, then marriage is probably not for you.
This is great, your mom is very smart and I’m going to steal this line from her.
For me, the biggest work is compromising gracefully and really meaning it. Heck no, I don’t want to spend my hard-earned vacation in some Midwestern backwater, no normal person would. But it’s where my in-laws are, so that means that indeed that is where some of my vacations take place. And the real work is doing it without being grudging about it, and finding aspects of it to genuinely enjoy, you know, so I’m having a good time for real and not faking it. And I’m pretty successful at it, (mostly) saving my flippant attitude for when I post about it on the SDMB.
And that’s a few times a year … there’s stuff that happens every day. I’m sure I feel this more than others because I’m a self-centered and lazy person to begin with. I do think, though, that’s there’s a misconception that if you have to work to enjoy something you’re not TRULY enjoying it, but I think that’s wrong. Sometimes I just have to more mindful about it. It’s like how you will have a much more enjoyable day at the beach if you put some work in before hand, like packing lunch, sunscreen, and fun beach toys. And then at the end of the day, you have to work some more, like unpacking your stuff so the wet towels don’t get gross and moldy in your beach bag, even though you are tired and would rather leave it until later but if you don’t do it now it’s setting yourself up for a bad experience the next time. So that’s my metaphor – the work of marriage is like the work of going to the beach. The better you are at doing the work involved, the more fun you will have and if you are doing it right, you will get better and more efficient with practice.
Most marriages have highs as well as lows. Sometimes the highs can be far longer than the lows, but it’s still better than being on a flat plane with no highs whatsoever.
It takes work, effort or whatever to cope with the lows. It takes even more work to make them progress towards highs.
I learnt this from the movie Parenthood, btw, though they were talking about bringing up children. It still holds true - you can’t expect everything to be wonderful all the time, and you can’t expect everything to even be OK all the time.
When people make that comment about marriage being work, there is often a (not inconsiderable) element of self congratulation in it. Conversely, when someone in a failed marriage hears that, they hear “You lazy shit, you didn’t work hard enough”. In America, at least, hard work is presumed to pay off.
It aint necessarily so. For myself, I think I’m just lucky.
Well my SO and I are opposites and were not honestly that compatible, 12 years ago. It has taken us work to both mature and watch the other maturing and not remain in the same habits of yesteryear. To listen, as is said. To take on board suggestions from your mate and change if it is necessary. Not all change from outside is bad! To learn to work with each other - I am an emotional person and he is very serious. Over the years we’ve come together where while we still maintain our roles, I am much more serious than I used to be and he has learned to relax a bit.
We complement each other and every day I go home happy to see him. I’m his kite and he’s my tether, he keeps me from flying away and I keep him from looking at the ground too much.
I think a better phrase would be “Marriage takes a lot of compromise.”
To some people (most people) compromise takes a lot of work. You’re forced to make an effort to do something differently than you would rather do it.
It’s easy to live in a “me” and “I” world where every action you take is a solo decision on your immediate or future contentment. You decide your “ends”, you decide your “means”.
Get into a marriage and I and me becomes us and we. Two people with variable ends and means trying to find a middle ground on every topic imaginable going forward. It takes a lot of compromise + effort = work.
Sometimes, when you love someone, you actually spend time thinking about what would make them happy, and behave accordingly, even if it means changing your behavior. That’s work.