Do you think you realised how hard marriage would be before you married

[Housewife212]

I think I was very naive

I thought things would fall into place like a romcom
Love dh but I definitely don’t think most people realise it’s work

Do you mean marriage as the actual relationship between the 2 of you or mixed in with domestic life?

I find marriage itself easy, but I feel perpetually overwhelmed with domestic life, life admin, balancing the needs of individual members of the family with shit that needs to get done and a moderately stressful job. I feel tired most of the time with a to do list that's off the page. I'd love a life PA.

Oh I LOVED being married. Being a widow of young children in my 30s is horrendous. I miss the love of my life with all my heart.

@collectingcpd I find this 'it's a MN thing' really frustrating! I'm a real person providing my opinion (of course not everyone tells the truth, but not everyone is lying either). No marriage is perfect and of course takes effort and compromise but I just dont find that hard work. There are probably many factors at play: your expectations, compatibility, what you consider to be hard work, your life view etc. Others will find parenting easier than marriage perhaps, but for me PERSONALLY, being a parent is very hard work, a constant slog that leaves me physically and mentally knackered. My DH is a breeze in comparison!

But then I don't drink alcohol either or give my kids fizzy drinks so I doubt I'm real or to be believed

Living with someone first is definitely something I would highly recommend as part of the marriage acid test. It is a shame you did not have that opportunity.

You could be thoroughly in love but if you cannot live with a person under the same roof, then a conventional marriage is out. Nothing kills love faster than the drip drip of inconsiderate behaviour despite your longstanding protests.

Yes, that is hard work and would make a marriage a misery. If I did not have children and was still relatively young, I might be tempted to look for a way out.

The long standing (25+ years) marriages that I truly know well: mine, my parents', and 4 intimate friends--- all have big challenges and truly difficult times in them.

Each of these marriages has some central issue which needs constant balancing, deep awareness, and watchful sensitivity. These issues come from the fact that we are ALL deeply flawed creatures, who need to be treated with compassion, honesty and rigour.

I am willing to believe that there are some long term marriages that have sailed through with ease and grace, but I don't know any of these intimately.

I think one reason young couples are surprised by the realities of "marriage" is that so much is said about "weddings"; everyone's all excited about the one big day; the "marriage" that comes after might not be mentioned at all until reality sets in.

I think that it's a good thing that nowadays, it's more usual for couples to live together before marrying, giving them an insight into the reality of being a couple. I find it hard to imagine the idea of only finding out the reality of living together after the wedding, which was once the norm.

When reading wedding magazines, I noted with disgust that they had plenty to say about dresses, confetti, ceremonies, limousines, toastmasters, but barely a word about marriage. (Yes, I know, they have an agenda; they're not going to put people off wedding by telling them about the mundane reality of marriage.) We anticipated that we needed something to occupy ourselves once the big day and the honeymoon had come and gone. Seven years later (and we heard a lot of teases about the "seven year itch"), we have to work to keep our marriage happy and interesting, find new excitements; in a sense that is hard work; and also the realities of life, as others have said, which change as everyone gets older.

But what do people mean by hard work and working on marriage? Like what kind of compromises are you making? Of course you have to take into account that there are other people sharing the house, is that the hard work?

Can you articulate why you find it hard? What's hard about it?

I constantly say to my children that relationships are not supposed to be hard. Circumstances can be hard- relationships shouldn’t be. Relationships should make your life better and happier. If they don’t-ditch them.

I lived with my DH for about 10 years before we got married and had a child in that time too.
There's a lot of compromise. But I knew this before we got married.
I do like him though, which helps

I got married 7 years ago I'd just turned 24. We lived together 3 years before we got married so we did know each other very well but honestly something changed when we got married and i kept thinking I'd made a huge mistake. The first 2 years were very hard even my husband agrees. 7 years on though i love being married and adore my husband. We stuck at it and we are both so glad we did

I literally didn't feel anything was different.

The only annoying thing was having to change my name on everything.

Ahh just seen your update. Moving in together is a huge step and most couples that I know, including DH and I went through a phase of bickering over silly little things. It's a big adjustment and definitely takes time to work through. Don't be too hard on yourself op.

I find marriage quite easy tbh. But then, DH and I are both very laid back, we rarely argue and we are on the same page about important things (e.g. number of children, where to live etc.). Some of the marriages I read about on here sound like a hell of a lot of work so I guess it varies!

I thought there would be a LOT of work, having observed my parents who love each other dearly but have had to work on their relationship. As a child/teenager, I also had to give up a lot of emotional energy to dealing with my DM's needs so assumed married life would be more of the same: hard work for someone I loved, draining but ultimately satisfying.

Actually, that was the surprise. Dh is very easy-going, the opposite of needy, doesn't often seem to rub me up the wrong way, nor I him. Been together over 35 year and of course it is possible the hard work will come as we age, but it hasn't yet. Other things have been very hard work: raising a disabled child, lack of money in the early days of our marriage, health issues, job loss, adapting to a foreign culture. Just not him.

I didn’t realise that my feelings towards marriage would change. I think I was naive in that respect. I didn’t find marriage hard work, but towards the end it was certainly hard work to try and fit myself into the relationship.

As I’ve got older, I’ve certainly come to understand myself better, which means that marriage/relationships etc aren’t for me.

I don’t understand what it is that people are saying is the hard work. My job is hard work - is exhausting and I don’t enjoy it. Parenting is hard work - it’s exhausting and frustrating at times. Running a house is hard work - cleaning and tidying is boring and a drudge and feels overwhelming. Managing finances is hard - it requires concentration and balance and restraint and worry. My husband makes all of these things easier and more bearable. I cannot imagine how hard my life would be without him. I would live in chaos, I would hate having to run the house solo and do all the admin, all the housework, all the thinking and planning - I could not manage it. If I didn’t come home from a shitty day at work to him, I would be so miserable. If I didn’t have someone to share the parenting highs and lows with, then parenting would be so much more challenging. Being married makes my life run so much more smoothly and easily. That seems to be the point of it - to share the work of life and ease the burdens. If marriage was another source of hard work, I would give up entirely!

If a relationship is hard work surely it's a sign that it isn't right for either of you? When you're with the right person you somehow meld together, not quite like a rom com as life isn't like that.

You'll cross swords now and again - that's normal - but hard work? No, it shouldn't be like that.

Easy for us, 20 years together and happy. Have barely argued either. We have the usual life stresses but tackle these together.

I loved being married to my late DH ( he wasn't late then of course, because that would be well, weird)

What I can identify as significant over and above loving each other, though some of these were the daily practice of our lives, others circumstance:

shared attitudes towards work
shared task around the home ( without ever needing a rota)
never undermining the other's disciplining of DD - saved it for when she wasn't there.
shared attitudes towards money
interests in common but still things done separately
common love of books
both atheists
shared politics and ethics
similar class background
similar educational background

We very rarely argued.

I miss him.

Yes and no. I thought it would be a bit of a challenge at times, but I was wrong about the specific ways and things that are difficult.

I thought it would be hard, as my mum and dad split up when I was little, so I was aware I had bad role models in some ways and just no role model in other ways.

So I over compensated a bit and overthought it, and it was the overthinking it and not being relaxed/confident in myself that was the real issue for me at times.

Now I am finding my feet re confidence in myself, it’s getting a lot easier.

No i did not know that years of ivf would be needed for us to have a family. Hard years. Marriage is hard at times

I find parenting much less hard, so far. It's physically hard, yes, but I seem to know what to do much more than I do in marriage. But I don't think being happy is the most important, only important thing. There are other priorities - duty for example.

When people say “hard work” what do they mean?

It's not marriage that's hard, it's getting used to living with someone I think. Dh and I moved in together gradually over a few years, so first he'd stay for a weekend, then he'd stay for holidays, then when we were used to that we bought a house (but were tenants in common just in case) and after that was going well we got married.

I don't think the marriage changed anything or made it any harder or easier. I suspect that when baby is born things may get harder though!