They say the first year of marriage is the hardest

[mude]

Are they right? Getting married in November and I am curious as to why this may be. Does your relationship after marriage?

Not sure who 'they' are, but I don't think that is 'a thing' at all.

Possibly if you've not lived together before getting married, then there is a period of settling / adjustment / getting used to each others foibles, but even then you should still be in the 'honeymoon period' I'd have thought.

Ours was quite tough. We'd never lived together before getting married (it was 30 years ago) and I was used to a busy family household. I found it quite lonely when DH wasn't around. It took me a while to get used to it. Then, a month after we got married he got made redundant and was out of work for a long time until he retrained so that was tough too as we'd just bought a house.

We were happy though (and still are, 30th anniversary next month).

It was my second worst. The year I found out his affair was the worst.

Rollicks!!! They are what you make it - don't take each other for granted, keep things clean and polite when arguing and be prepared to admit to being wrong

We found it hard - but we hadn't lived together beforehand, and adjusting to sharing space was hard....it doesn't help that he's very tidy and I'm not, but we're still going strong 16 years later, so if that was the worst bit, then it wasn't too bad at all!!

Had a tough few months after marriage but it settled-I think you start questioning the big stuff more and takes a while to adjust to the seriousness of the commitment you have made together.
Just keep talking talking talking and LISTENING!!
Good luck xx

We didn't find the first year of marriage the hardest, but we had lived together for 2 years before that.

The first year after having a baby, definitely!

I think you've mixed up marriage with running your own business this made me laugh. Having done both I can attest that the first year of business is harder than the first year of (our) marriage.

In fact, not much changed for us post marriage, we still just potter along like we always have. We rarely argue, we don't bicker. We just pootle about our lives. Maybe this isn't the romantic dream that some people want, but it works for us.

The years after kids are the hardest without question

I think it's harder as you go on. When you have children, life can be hard - all those adjustments to having another little person who is very dependant on you. Then, as the children grow older and you've more time to spend together, you do sometimes wonder what brought you together in the first place!

It was for us. DH seemed to think now we were married he could stop making any effort at all. We spend most of the second year in marriage counselling after I cracked and told him I was leaving him.

But...10 years on we're very happy and have two gorgeous children. He's learnt not to take me for granted and we've both learned to be better at communicating.

Oh, and having kids strengthened our relationship, we became more of a team.

True for us.

We had been together 13 years and had 2 kids before getting married, all was ticking along nicely until we got married (DH instigated it) and he slowly slipped into depression and had a mental breakdown 5 months later resulting in me sending him to live 200 miles away for 4 months to recover as it was make or break for me... Counselling threw up very little in the way of reasoning and there wasn't a clear cut reason why it happened but they say it was coincidence and stress from work rather than me or our marriage!

2.5 years on he's pretty much recovered and has learnt he had to talk to me about his feelings and I need to listen more but other than that we're fine. We ignored our 1st anniversary though there than to congratulate ourselves for getting through the shit!

I got married 10 months ago and can honestly say this has been one of the loveliest years of our 9 year relationship. I hope I can remain as happy as I am now forever.

Think it probably depends on whether you've lived together before. We found the first year of marriage hard, but it's only been six years so far so who knows. Hadn't lived together before. And the big change was family on both sides finally properly acknowledging partner. No one meant badly, we're just from a conservative south Asian culture (although we didn't have an arranged marriage or anything, dated for a couple of years before wedding). Just adjusting to new in laws expectations etc was hard. Suddenly post wedding it was like I'd turned the clock back 50 and everyone (except DH) expected me to play "wife". I tried, failed to meet expectations, bristled. Wedding brought out worst of both sides of family etc etc.

Probably not relevant if you're from a typical modern British family and have lived together before marriage. It is a fun adventure though! Good luck with the wedding :)

I've haven't been married 2 years yet so probably not in the best position to comment! I also wasn't that fussed about getting married as we were already living together so didn't see the point so didn't really have any expectations. Oh and accidentally got knocked up on our honeymoon... But getting to the point: our first year of marriage was lovely, and seeing my husband become a fantastic father has made me love him even more (vomit). Of course there were bumps in the road, but I've been pleasantly surprised by marriage!

The first year was the only good year.

No way . First years the easy part

I'd say the 10th year is when it started to do your head in ( at times ) . I'm on year 19 so far (married at 16)

I don't think "they" do, do they? I've never heard anyone say that - perhaps I don't know the same "they".

The only saying I remember hearing about the first year of marriage is that if you put a penny into a jar every time you have sex during the first year of marriage, and take one out every time from the second year onwards, you'll never empty the jar ... (but I think that that dates from the days before co-habiting was common, so now it should probably be the first year you live together... who knows).

It was for me due to the very much unplanned honeymoon conception of DC1!

Well I seem to recall that couples are supposed to have more sex in the first year (or two - can't recall) than for the rest of their lives (or marriage). So it's possible the first year of marriage is the hardest; just not in the way you first thought.

No, the last year was definitely the worst.

For some people it can be, my friend's first year of marriage involved 2 family deaths plus a miscarriage, the latter of which nearly broke them. In general not so much.

It used to be in my parents age group purely because they'd never live together until after marriage and living together is the true test of compatability. So many couples were stuck hashing it out then.

I think it gets harder as years go on. Children change the dynamics, changes in careers, house moves, problems with parents, general tiredness - lots of things make it hard. First year is lovely.