We knew each other for five years before we got engaged, but never lived closer than 600 miles from each other. We’ve been married 30 years (and don’t have separate accounts. )
So, my expert advice:
Make sure you basically agree on the important stuff, money and sex in that order. Neither of us would ever spend a significant amount of money without the other knowing, and neither of us particularly like spending money. Chortling over our broker statement is a lot more fun. I think we might have had one fight about money in 30 years.
Go through a crisis together. My daughter and her long term boyfriend are getting married in a few months. I had my doubts, but he stood up for her when she was going through a crisis, and after that I had no qualms.
Can you really not live apart? We were actually pretty serious for a year, then more or less broke up, and somehow kept in contact every so often. By the time we actually started talking frequently again, we had both tried plenty of other people, none of whom were satisfactory. We both figured out that no one else would do. My daughter and her boyfriend went through similar, but not as extreme, situations when she went to college.
I’d think not wanting to have serious conversations about money and kids etc. would be a deal breaker. It is also good to have at least a few arguments before committing. You’ll have them, and how you resolve them is crucial. I’d worry about couple whose relationship was a month of dating bliss getting married. On the other hand, we have friends who knew each other for two weeks before getting married, and they’re married for over 20 years. They happen to be perfectly matched.
Well I’ve got a whopping 9 months of marriage under my belt, but it has been a perfectly blissful 9 months so far! I have a few tips:
Before you get married, make sure you have a fight! If you don’t know how you guys are going to fight, you don’t know how you will handle it. We have had exactly one fight ever. He humiliated me in a public place by implying our sex life was crap (basically he was making a joke but being so straightfaced that it was impossible for others to tell - people started getting very uncomfortable and he was clueless about how awkward the entire thing got). It was almost a relief - I had discussed with my therapist whether we were avoiding communicating or just got along really well. Turns out it’s the latter, thank goodness. There was screaming, yelling, crying, apologies, excuses, but we talked about it and hopefully we won’t be repeating the experience. But it’s good to know that when we do have another fight, we can handle it.
If something is bothering you, don’t ambush the other person. My husband spends huge amounts of time on the computer. When we first moved in together, the computer was in the office and I felt totally alone most of the time. Sometimes it really bothered me, but when I decided I could take it no more, I approached him and explained that I wanted to talk to him about the computer and me feeling abandoned, and how about we talk about it tomorrow night? This gave him time to think about the situation, imagine how I was feeling, and most importantly it gave him time to prepare and not feel defensive. We talked about it and resolved the issue.
Sex! Talk about it, but also just do it. Yes, your libidos will differ. But if you communicate about it, resentment doesn’t take hold. Sometimes just keeping the ball rolling helps increase desire. Keep a sense of humor. Neglect is not sexy.
When you decide to “share everything” all is good. Until it isn’t. Then you have to decide who actually gets to keep which wedding gift, and every item accumulated since you got together.
Even if that Cuisinart has been running like a champ for the last 18 years and Mr. Unfortunate has been the primary meal-preparer during that time, it may turn out to have been a wedding gift from Mrs. Unfortunate’s great aunt, and Mrs. Unfortunate’s feeling is that ownership accrues to the closest friend or relative of the gift-giver.
It’s a shock to discover that things you’d been using daily for decades were never really yours at all. Not to mention the fact that your net worth isn’t really x, it’s x/2. Honestly, I think marriages would be more stable if we acknowledged those facts while we were still happy together. It many cases I think it would help us stay happy.
I think this is an individual thing. While I have a shiney new retirement account at work, my wife handles all the finances. Hell, technically our house was in her name alone until we refinanced!
When I mentioned these things to some co-workers, they were floored. “Aren’t you worried you’re gonna get screwed?”
Of course not. I trust her.
And (in only my opinion) making plans for the future that are partially focused on what to do when the relationship explodes is setting up for a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I admit it’s a dilemma, but in retrospect I think the explosions are caused in part by the unexamined assumptions (often swaddled in a warm blanket we call trust) that accumulate in a marriage. Most of the “plans” you’ll be making will be based on the best case scenarios. But any other human enterprise (a business, say) normally also makes some assessment of the full range of possible outcomes. There’s something almost superstitious about our failure to do so in our marriages.
One of the possible outcomes that every spouse needs to consider is the possibility that your partner will become incompetent. Considering it isn’t the same as planning on it or expecting it, but like it or not it is included in the possibilities that we undertake when we marry.
When you’re thinking about your life and the life of someone you love, ignoring the possibilities is a dereliction of duty, wouldn’t you say?
Right now everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love and that is wonderful. But you gotta know that sooner or later you’re gonna be screaming at each other about who’s gonna get this dish. This eight dollar dish will cost you a thousand dollars in phone calls to the legal firm of That’s Mine, This Is Yours. ~When Harry Met Sally.
My folks had everything “jointly” and it was never a problem. But then, they married in 1941 and I don’t think divorce was ever an option for their generation. Being raised by them, I assumed everybody did things the same way.
When you’re young and don’t have two nickels to rub together, maybe it doesn’t matter much. When you’ve accumulated some wealth and/or have kids, it changes.
PS-I kind of liked the wagon wheel coffee table! “When Harry Met Sally” = another video to watch.
Re: fighting…absolutely. You have to know how conflicts are resolved. As I mentioned in post #3, fighting with some people = screaming, which I personally can’t handle. I mean, I’m educated, she was educated: does volume = correctness? Others will resort to name-calling or passive-aggressive games or throwing things or whatever. Give me a calm, rational debate any day.
Re: sex. IMO sex should never be used as a weapon. I understand the need to calm down after a fight etc. but if either of you cuts off the supply for weeks as a result of the argument, the relationship is over. Running in the background at all times is “I love you” and you can’t let squabbles obscure that. Sex isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing, either. IMO it’s a cement that reaffirms the premise of love.
What I meant was, if Mr. Unfortunate owned that Cuisinart outright before they were married, it’s HIS… no ifs ands or buts about it. Separate property.
On the other hand, assuming you have a joint bank account or something like that, if you bought a cuisinart with the money in that account, or got one given to “Mr. and Mrs. Unfortunate”, then it’s community property, and in the pool of things that need to be split up in case of a divorce.
Based on my parents, 99% of stuff after some point ends up comingled and community property anyway, if you stay married long enough.
I think too much weight is being given to the community property issue. If you spend any period of time married, you’ll have to seperate out the DVD’s, Kitchen equipment, and savings.
Divorce sucks and this is just one of the many reasons it sucks.
I would NOT decide to marry or not marry if a ‘mine vs. yours’ mindset is even an inkling of an issue.
I’m married. I have two wonderful kids and a wonderful wife. If, heaven forbid, I were put back on the market, I’d have NO desire to get hitched again. I’ve done the wedding (really expensive, really stressful, and it’s really for EVERYBODY ELSE.) It’s ironic that the bride remembers very little of ‘her day’.
I have all the trappings that marriage gives a person. I see no need to go through those motions again. She’d have to be one helluva person to make me even consider it.
You’ve gotta be very careful in a domestic partnership, too…or else you’ll end up separating the silverware again. Heck, protect your assets going into the relationship, but know that if it ends after any significant period of time, you’ll be separating the sheets. Until then, live like you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together. Any less is cheating.
Talk about stuff like that. It’s very, very easy to see disrespect and passive-aggressive behavior where it isn’t really there, almost as easy as it is for humans to “see” faces in random patterns.
An example: I would ask Mr. Neville to empty the dishwasher in the evening after dinner. He wouldn’t do it until quite late. I like to get the evening’s chores out of the way relatively early, so I can relax later. I thought he wasn’t emptying the dishwasher until I was ready to go to bed to be passive-aggressive and all that. Turns out he had no idea I minded, and he prefers to put off the evening’s chores until he’s about ready to go to bed. I said to him, “If you’re going to empty the dishwasher in the evening, please do it before about 10, so I’m not too wiped out to load it”. “OK”. I get the dishwasher emptied before I’m too wiped out to deal with it, he doesn’t get nagged- win-win.
Speaking of winning, when you fight with the spouse, don’t fight to win. You’re a team, so it doesn’t make sense to try to score points against your spouse. Think of it as “there is a problem, and we need to find a mutually acceptable solution to it” rather than “I want to show him/her that I’m right and he/she is wrong”.
Show appreciation to your spouse. Say “thank you for doing that”, even if it’s something they are expected to do all the time. It costs you a couple of breaths and a few seconds, and they feel appreciated and not-taken-for-granted. Nobody likes to feel taken for granted.
Razorette and I “dated” for about two months before I popped the question. We both had pragmatic and ulterior motives for entering into the union. I wanted, as Cat Stevens sang back then, a “hard-headed woman” and I got one. She is the brains of the outfit; she keeps us solvent and makes pragmatic, common-sense plans. She also ramrods the domestic scene; I do my share of the housework because I’m told to, and I like the boundaries. She, on the other hand, wanted someone who wasn’t afraid to reach for the stars, to dream a little (okay, a LOT) and who could imagine a future for us.
But if our courtship was amazingly brief, the engagement was more than a year long. There were some terrible times, awful battles that made us both reconsider our decision. I remember at one point feeling trapped because we’d already spent so much money on stuff for the wedding and our marriage that we couldn’t just walk away. As it turned out, I wasn’t trapped – I was forced to work things out and compromise so we could move forward. It was a valuable lesson.
Marriage is hard work. Hard. Work. If you think you can attend the wedding, then go back to focusing on your career, forget it. The marriage must be more important than your personal dreams and desires; more important than your mother, father and siblings; more important than your career. If it isn’t, you will strangle it and it, in turn, will never sustain you. But if you nourish your marriage, put it ahead of everything else, it will sustain you all your life like nothing else and no one else can. Of course, if you’re a rock-star professional (neurosurgeon, rain-making lawyer, public utility lineman) you WILL have to leave your home in the middle of the night to save lives, you will miss precious family moments and you will pull long, exhausting shifts. But if you spend the rest of your time working on your marriage, it will all be worthwhile. But if you constantly put your career first, you’ll end up extremely successful, lonely and bitter.
The worst mistake I see being made are young people who “fall in love,” get married and then want to continue to live their lives as if nothing has changed. You have to be willing to dump old friends and abandon old ways if they begin to damage your marriage. Otherwise, you’re not worthy of the marriage.
My brother in law doesn’t have a great track record with women. And to expidite getting rid of the last one, Brainiac4 and I helped pay for the divorce.
They had snowshoes. Two people who, to the best of my knowledge, won’t go out on a long walk in nice weather - much less snowshoe for fun in the cold, had been given two pairs of snowshoes as a Christmas gift from her father.
For some unknown reason, he wanted to keep his pair - they were HIS snowshoes. For some unknown reason, she wanted both pairs - they were a gift from HER father. $200 in snowshoes that had never been used cost me $800 in legal bills. I have no idea who got the snowshoes.
Anyway, that has nothing about being happy, unless its “don’t pay for your brother in laws divorce unless you are willing to let $800 on snowshoes go for fear of it hurting your own marriage.”
By incompetent do you mean senile or something? That is an advantage commingling - you don’t lose access to half the money.
However, spending too much time worrying about the possibilities is not good. The fastest way to drive your wife (or husband) into the arms of the milkman is to worry loudly about her running off with the milkman. Separate accounts at this time for us would be destructive, since we’ve done fine without them. Worrying about worst cases is not all that good a thing to do.
Different locations have different “default versions” for financial arrangements in a marriage; they also have different “acceptable versions.” You should also find out which are the possible versions before you start sending out invitations, find out which is the default, and discuss which version you want. And of course, you need to make sure that the actual paper you’re signing states the option you want!
Don’t expect your spouse to be able to read your mind after you are married, unless you are both Vulcans. For us humans, it doesn’t work that way. You will still have to tell your spouse what’s wrong, how you’re feeling, and so on.
Some people are much better at noticing dirt and messes than others. If you’re married to someone who doesn’t tend to notice those things, you should just resign yourself to periodically having to ask them to clean the bathroom, do the laundry, or whatever. It takes a few breaths and a few seconds to say “Honey, could you please do the laundry”. I don’t see what the big deal is here, but some people make one out of it. It’s not like the person asking the spouse to do the laundry has to do it themselves.
I just want to pop in and thank everybody for sharing their advice and wisdom. I sent this thread to my boyfriend to read, too, and we’re both happy to find that we’ve already done/talked about most of the things that have been mentioned.
One modified form of joint vs. separate accounts may work for some. Each contributes to a joint account for the usual stuff (mortgage, groceries, etc.) and each maintains a separate, “disposable” income account.
I’ve heard that some people make each other crazy when they don’t have a separate account to spend as they like. E.g. suppose he loves to build models and she loves to collect memorabilia. Rather than go through a whole scene every time one wants to indulge him- or herself, it comes out of the separate accounts and there’s no fuss about how much it cost “us.”
I wouldn’t say that the only way to have a good marriage is to have three bank account (his, hers, and ours), but I would say that regardless of how you work out your finances, both partners should be aware of them. Maybe you don’t much like handling money and paying bills and stuff, but as an adult, you have a responsibility to yourself to at least know the basics of your family budget (what are your salaries, how much are your bills each month, what are your debts, etc.).
One thing that young people (heck, everyone) needs to know before marriage is that Hollywood lies. You probably aren’t going to find movie love, and that’s okay because it’s a fantasy. Your fantasy romance doesn’t stop when the credits roll; your fantasy romance has bad breath, stubbly legs, bills, debts, and kids from former marriages. You just have to stay realistic; no one is having the perfect relationship.
On the other hand, you also won’t live the Hollywood lie that any married couple is on the verge of a divorce also. Any story verges on changes to the characters, whether from singlehood to couplehood or back. In real life, you just keep on going, with big changes few and far between.
I figure once you’ve been through a messy childbirth together, you should be good for anything.
Jim and I were dating two months when he popped the question, and were married nine months later. That was ten years ago next month, so that may count as a whirlwind courtship.
In those nine months, we talked, talked more, and did even more talking. While we didn’t cover every little thing that could come up, and didn’t cover a lot of things that have come up, we managed to cover the really important things. Money, kids, and what we envisioned for our future selves. Some of those visions have changed over the years, but there was no drastic changing of minds, as change occurred, we talked again.
I believe it was four years into our marriage before we had an argument. I can’t even remember what it was, it was so silly and small. But after it was over, we just looked at each other and thought, “So thats it.” It was like a burden had been lifted, no one could believe we had never fought, and we learned a lot more about each other that day.
I agree about marrying your best friend. He is and will always be my best friend. We remind each other on a regular basis how precious the other is. And we always make sure that we keep up on the little things. Even if the other doesn’t notice right away, it’s done.
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