To ask, why do people say marriage is hard?

[chickpea1982]

Just as the title says really. I was just watching something on TV and someone said, "marriage is hard", and I wondered, "how is it hard?" So I thought I would ask for opinions!

Ive been married 20 years and never found it hard.

At risk of sounding a bit cold and cynical, marriage is a sound legal agreement if you’re pooling your resources as a couple and sharing finances.( Unless for religious beliefs)

I don’t buy into marriage having magical powers that make you live happily ever after. Love isn’t all you need- it doesn’t conquer all in real life.

Couples are often asked What’s your secret? when they say they’ve been happily married for 30 years or whatever.

The answer is nearly always some version of We work at it/ put the effort in to make it work.

I haven’t found it hard. Life has been hard in various ways, and DH gets on my nerves from time to time, as I do on his. Being married hasn’t been the problem though, it has been external life events.

Being single through those same life events would have been significantly harder (whatever DH does or doesn’t do, he is always more help than nothing), and cohabiting would have been exactly the same.

Clearly you have a very different sense of humour and the ridiculous from DP and me.

That's one element we share completely and I'm sure has contributed to nearly 40 years of togetherness.

This is such a good question. I stayed an emotionally what I now realise was an abusive marriage for too long because I kept telling myself that marriage is hard and I should keep trying.

That’s just “living with people” though! Same as living with your parents, or housemates, or your adult kids.

“Living with other people requires give and take and the ability to overlook minor annoyances” - yep not many people would disagree. But “marriage is hard work” implies a bit more than that, I think. Some special work unique to marriage.

You get people saying “X wasn’t willing to put the hard work in to maintain the marriage”, or do the work on themselves, or similar which implies marriage needs some deep introspection and self help books to maintain, and I really don’t think it does for most people.

Yes I occasionally find it hard, and I'm happily married for over 20 years. It's hard to compromise sometimes, to consider someone else when I selfishly sometimes just want to do what I want to do, without thinking about / considering Dh, or ds's for that matter.

I think when people say this they mean long term relationships are hard, the marriage part is incidental. I find it hard I'll admit. Sometimes because Dh drives me mad but often it's a case of its not you it's me. I hate sharing a bedroom and bathroom. I hate having to constantly be available to someone else. I often really envy people who live alone as I constantly crave solitude. I imagine how wonderful it would be to find the scissors in the place it's supposed to be or only watch what I want on Netflix. But that problem would exist with any partner and I have 3 children I love desperately so it's the price I have to pay.

Same here 31 years and perfectly happy

Yes- any relationship requires work and give and take.

I agree, not all marriages end well- and that’s nothing to do with the amount of “hard work” people might put in.

Therss no point flogging a dead horse!

I think it depends on the two people in the marriage. I love dh with all that I am but we are night and day. I'm an introvert who likes her own space, I like socialising more in small groups and for short periods, I'm happy with my own company, I wake early, am mindful on overspending and like a mixture of routine and going with the flow. To be with dh I have to make an effort as does he, sometimes that requires compromise on my part, sometimes on his.

Our families are very different and the few times they have come together we have realised that it's uncomfortable all round and doesn't work.

I've learned not to sweat the small stuff and it works because we respect and love each other. He's learnt that certain things are more important to me than him so makes more of an effort in those areas. Ultimately we have shared goals and that along with love and respect binds us together. Neither of us is perfect and we are both growing and developing as people, I'm not the exact same person I was when we first met and neither is he but we do so together. My 8 year old said our home is a happy one so I was pleased with that.

@Pludoniyum

I don't see that long term co habitation when you own a house together and have children together is that different from marriage tbh.

Day to day it’s not maybe. But when you bring the assets into the marriage and are the higher earner, there’s a lot more at stake in getting married.

Which presumably is why in general women are far more enthusiastic about marriage than men.

Marriage would be financial suicide for me now but even if not it would feel too much like a millstone around my neck.

At the risk of people inevitably telling me my relationship must be really boring, I think the reason I don't identify with a lot of these comments is that DH and I don'treally compromise because 99% of things people are saying they compromise on, we agree on. For that reason we don't really argue and we don't tend to get on each other's nerves either. We bicker a bit from time to time but that's all.

This is pretty much the same for us. We just don't have a lot of sticking points really. Also he's an easy person to be around - he's kind, upbeat, funny, unselfish, even-tempered and puts me first.
Of course we've had difficult things in our life together, but having him has made the difficulties easier.

I married a person that was wrong for me. That makes marriage very hard work.

😂😂 I know, right! What's with that!? Married 30 years and I get that a lot. Will never understand how a happy marriage can make people angry.

I’ve been married 30 years and never get angry reactions. You get it a lot?

Maybe they think you’re boasting or saying it at the wrong moment?
If you were consoling a friend who’s husband had just left her it wouldn’t go down that well to declare you’ve been happily married for three decades. I mean no one likes a show off 🤣

I’ll freely admit I’m happy but also that it can be (at times) hard to make it work. We’re both flawed.

No drama - merely a light-hearted comment in response to the other poster 😂😂

Life is hard.
if you’re married to a good person it makes it easier, not harder.

The first year of our marriage was really hard and we almost split up - was just a case of adjusting expectations on each side really. I now think it’s cyclical , there are times when I don’t fe

Yep

marriage hasn’t been hard for me so far. Only 6 years in though so there is still time 🤣

'What shall we have for dinner' "what shall we paint the walls" aren't the compromises people are talking about though

For example a recent scenario me and DH encountered:
I got offered a great opportunity work wise 2hrs away from where we lived (place a). DH has a good job back home in place b. There are no jobs in his industry in place a

Our options are:

1. DH sacrifice his career and move to place A for my career 2)me sacrifice my career and stay in place B where I am unlikely to ever have the same opportunity 3)someone commute 1hr+ each day
2. break up

Also bearing in mind we love each other and want the other one to be happy. There's no perfect easy solution

There's always going to be massive compromises if 2 people want to stay together. 2 people throughout their life will change, they will have big wants, dreams and desires. You need to keep 2 people happy, stimulated outside of the relationship as well as finding quality time to spend together. Maybe I'm selfish but I do find that hard. And I don't think its because DH isn't the one

I wouldn't want to be with someone who thought the same as me because I enjoy listening to DHs opinions and I enjoy his frame of mind, he brings a lot to the table I dont. I also wouldn't want a life based purely off my relationship and that gives a lot of plates to juggle

Living with a man 🤮

I have been married twice with an eight year gap in between. In my experience, being single was much, much harder. I am so much happier and my life is so much easier now I have married again.

Being single was hard for me.

I can't see that we would ever face scenario 1 because neither DH nor I are particularly career oriented, we live in a part of the country where the job market is generally very good, and we also have a lot of family support where we live which neither of us would ever want to move away from.

We don't have the same opinions about everything and our hobbies are different but we tend to approach life in the same away and we are united in our views on how we manage parenting, finances, all the important stuff.

Both of us are quite happy and stimulated outside the relationship. I also don't know what you mean about a life based purely off a relationship as I doubt anyone has that unless they're locked in the same room together 24 hours a day with no kids, no family, no friends, no job, no hobbies.