Tell me about your first year of marriage.

[CrankyTwanky]

I'd just like to hear your experiences.

It's my (and DH's) first anniversary tomorrow. I was 9 weeks pg on my wedding day, and our year has been kind of dominated by that.

We are poor, stressed, but happy.

Does the first year reflect the rest of your lives together?

Love to hear your stories.

We gave up our jobs, rented our flat and travelled around the world. It was a fab (if a little scary!) way to start the marriage. Having to rely on each other alone for company with no familiar family and friends was a real challenge.
However we now have some amazing memories to share for the rest of our lives. Sometimes when it all gets a bit mundane(2 kids later) we try to recall all the cool places we have been and inspirational people we met. Also how great we look in beachwear in the pics!
We will have been married for 10 yrs next year.

Some really positive stories!

I hope things will get easier; I know so many people who have divorced a couple of years after a mahoosive show-stopping wedding, when I've always wanted is a marriage. I hope this stands us in good stead.

TDiddy, thats sounds blissful! We already had 2 DC, so will wait until retirement for that kind of closeness!

, mamatomy!

Got married in May last year, it's been the best 15 months of my life (well, and the 12 months before that - since DH came into my life).

We didn't live together first, though had had pretty much every weekend together (was a long distance courtship). He moved down to live with me when we got married (a year to the day since we met), got a new job, so going on honeymoon straight away wasn't ideal, and for various other reasons, we postponed the honeymoon til six months after the wedding (e.g. partly finances, partly season/weather of where we wanted to go on honeymoon, partly saving enough annual leave). Love living with him - it still makes my heart skip when I hear his key in the lock when he comes home from work. Neither of us had lived with a love-interest before, and both adapted effortlessly.

Got pregnant with our first baby on our belated honeymoon (we weren't trying beforehand)- I am due in eight weeks.

Happy Anniversary, OP.

First year of marriage was one of the absolute worst times of my life!!!

We got married in his home country after living together for 6 months due to immigration. No family present but it was awesome nevertheless.

Asked advice from immigration lawyer and she gave us the green light to have a second celebration with all the family and a small gathering of friends in my parent's garden back in the UK 3 months later.

WORST MISTAKE EVER!!!
Ended up stranded in the UK without him for 11 months - continually told 'just another few weeks' throughout so was not able to move on and 'make a life'. (Luckily was able to stay with a wonderful friend.)

Was told by 3 differengt agencies after 7 months that 'of course you are allowed to go over and visit him for 3 months - no problem!'.
Arrived at airport and was promptly arrested and dettained for 5 hours by aggressive border control man - mug shots and finger prints left right and center...

Was given 'parole' for one month visit before having to go back to the UK.

When I FINALLY was allowed to join my husband in the marital home he was promptly deployed 3 months later. Initially he was going to be gone 3 months - he came home 7 months later. I hated his country with a great passion at this point which really is not fair I know.

BUT... Now we are both living in a foreign country. Blissfully happy. I love him to bits. I really, really do! And we both count ourselves incredibly lucky to have found eachother.

If only we could now have a baby and ensure that he never deploys again it would be PERFECT!

I also fell pregnant straight away-baby due 42 weeks after wedding.

So it was all baby talk for us.
Then baby early so had a 5month old at 1st anniversary!

So a great first year!

WE had been together 7 years and lived with each other for 4 so no real surprises.
We went to Peru and Bolivia 5 months after our wedding and almost straight afterwards found out we were expecting DS1.
It was a lovely, hopeful first year of marriage and still felt different even though we'd been living together beforehand, which surprised me.

It was a lovely time. I think it was helped by the fact that both sets of parents had strong happy marriages and we had their example to follow.

I had been told that I could never have a child (but see my other thread!) so we both worked. This meant that money was never too much of an issue and I know we were lucky in this respect.

Probably the second best year of my life but still well behind right now!!

i've been married for 20 years and no it doesn't stay the same, every year is different and you will face difficult things, loss of a job, parents dying, serious illnesses, teenagers, etc as well as great things like a new house, more children, fun holidays etc. The good thing is that you don't have to try to face any of those things alone.My advice to people would be cut each other a bit of slack because no one is perfect.There are times I could have gladly left him, but they go away after a time, it's just part of dealing with stresses as you go along. Don't expect your OH to know what he is doing all the time, I'm sure he won't, we're all kids deep down, playing at being grown up and often we don't have a clue how we should behave, so if you do hit a rough patch, think of your hubby as a sulky teen, or tantrumed toddler and carry on, keep laughing no matter what. You've made a good start, if you don't want to run for the hills after the first year together with a baby then I think you will be fine.

I think we had more silly rows during our first year than at any other time in our marriage. We\ve been married for 30 years now and we were both considered very young and foolish at the time and that it WOULD.NOT.LAST.
I agree with Blueskydreamer.

We got married last July. The last year has been the most settled, happy and contented of my life, and being married to my dh is bliss (sorry to make you all vom).

I got pregnant after 6 months of marriage and am now sitting here a big bloated pregnant whale. Baby is due in September.

We have had stresses to deal with (I left my job because of an evil boss, lots of stuff has gone wrong in our apartment, dh has had IBS problems) but we are solid as a rock and very happy.

After the baby is born our next task is to buy a bigger place. It won't cause money stress but I'm sure searching in London for a suitable pad will be a nightmare! But I'm still excited. Life with him is very happy.

I should add- dh and I have known each other for 13 years and have been together for 7 of them- albeit with a break in the middle of those 7. When we got back together we got engaged within a month, my family thought we were being crazy, but we knew we were solid and here we are 3 years later blissfully happy and soon to have a family.

The reasons that we split before would not split us now- we were younger and didn't realise that rough patches/ bad life turmoil are part of a long term relationship. But it did us good because being apart was awful and we realised what we had.

I was floating on air for the year after we got married. I had to really hold myself back from telling everyone how they must get married, really, it's brilliant, everyone should do it.

Infertility brought us down to Earth with a bump. :( And then finally I conceived :) and have been knackered ever since.

Babies and sleep deprivation tend to drive out romance. I can finally see the end of exhaustion and the start of getting a marriage back again though.

I got pregnant two months after the wedding and (for various reasons) got stuck without a passport for the next six-months, going a bit stir-crazy because unable to travel.

About six months in DH realised/recognised he was an alcoholic and started going to AA nightly which meant we barely saw each other for about three months and he started having a whole other section to his life and people he talked to about things that weren't me. I found this a bit hard to deal with for a while but in retrospect it was good to force me to go out and get myself a life as well.

First anniversary we didn't do anything - I think we had a nice meal at home. Both exausted due to newborn(ish) baby.

Half-way through the second year now and that's been more challenging but I still think everytime we're knocked down we get back up again stronger.

My first year of marriage was completely sh*t and tbh I have often looked back and wondered why on earth I didn't run for the hills.

We never lived together. I moved all the way down South to a house we had bought. From that moment on my DH turned really weird.

He wouldn't be intimate with me or let me touch him. He constantly oggled other women very obviously when I was with him. He told me a number of times that he didn't find me attractive and then at other times asked me why I couldn't look like a few of his exes as they were so 'glamorous.'

He would tell me that I didn't clean the house well enough and that I was a 'superficial' cleaner. He didn't want to spend time with me at all and I was baffled as to why not (still am). I felt devastated as all my family was hundreds of miles away.

Needless to say that I lived a lot of years believing that I was at fault, I wasn't good looking enough, pleasing enough, experienced enough etc until one day it dawned on me that he was the problem not me.

The sad thing is that now he has realised what a complete sh*t he has been he wants me to be excited about the 'new' him but I can't. The new him is very nice but I can't forget all the damamge that has been done!