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?

Hello no. The first few years were amazing.

15 years on and it's been harder some years than others. Generally after 2 dcs, renovating an old house, both self employed, no close family support...were just both tired. We still like each other and I still fancy him but it's very much a Groundhog Day situation sometimes. We rub along.

Our first year was difficult, external circumstances mainly, looking after my elderly father after my dear mother's unexpected death. We had lived together previously. We survived though, and are looking forward to our Silver Wedding. I always say in life, it's not what happens to you, it's how you deal with it!!!

Nope, first few years were great.

I think maybe this was true when most couples didn't live together before marriage, but now when most couples do? No, I found it hard getting used to my new name, but it was a lovely year of freedom really. No kids, no mortgage, just work and travel and we were totally besotted with each other - it was nice. Life now is drudgery by comparison.

The last year before you split is the hardest. Grim. If you don't split then it's one of the years after having kids. If you don't have kids then it's the year that something tests you.

We lived together before marriage and I would say that the hardest year for us was our first year of married life. I think it was partly because there were a few things that we decided to do / ended up doing during the first 18 months that we were married that would be very stressful whenever you did them. We:

• sold dh's flat and bought a house in a different city;
• both changed jobs;
• had an unexpected and very difficult pregnancy resulting in a premature baby.

On the upside, I like that (if you ignore a brief period when I had post-natal depression) our relationship has only become better and better over time!

i get married in 5 weeks...hope this isnt true!! lol!

Me and DH didn't live together before we got married and had only known each other 5 months (no I wasn't pregnant).

We both loved the first year of marriage. It was so exciting starting our new life together and finding out more about each other.

We have been married almost 40 years now and are still very happy. We have had some tough times but no one year has been particularly bad as there was always good bits along with bad in any one year.

We haven't got children though so I think that makes a difference. Most of our friends say their marriages struggled after children. In fact most of them got divorced and said it all started to go wrong after having children

Not true for me. So far the hardest year was the one after our first DS was born and we had to adjust to being parents for the first time.

Agree with others that this comes from the olden days. Back then,with a first marriage it was the first time you'd lived with someone, maybe the first time you'd had sex, and many women would have got pregnant that year (or already been pregnant) and had a child.

Imagine this would be true in the old days if you'd never lived with them, etc. I loved the first year after we were married!

I got pregnant a couple of months after getting married so mine was but I think if I hadn't gotten pregnant it wouldn't have made a difference to us at all!! Some people move in together when they get married which I think can strain more than getting married itself x

I don't know, I found out I was pregnant a few days after we came back from honeymoon, so our first year challenges were mostly to do with becoming first time parents. Seeing as we'd lived together 18 months before we got married I don't see why the first year of marriage itself would have been any different.

People told us this...constantly. We didn't live together before and everyone told us it would be awful getting used to sharing your space.

Well we're married 18 months now and have got on absolutely fine! Genuinely never had a blazing row and very seldom fall out. I think it very much depends on the two personalities involved though, my DH is the polar opposite of me..id be the more highly strung one and he is more relaxed. We balance eachothher out I think.

Hah - no.

First year with a newborn I'd say ranks as the hardest. But I couldn't have survived it without DH so I guess it also counted as a good one.