Why do they say marriage is hard?

[plehpleh]

We have been married 2.5 years with a 20mo. Can I please ask why people say marriage is hard?

Is it something that becomes harder as you mature and change as people? Is it supporting each other though some of life's hardest times, like illness and loss of parents?

I'm genuinely am not trying to say we're perfect, only that we're only 2 years in and it's been wonderful so far and I'm wondering what the triggers are to make it harder down the line. Or do you not agree that marriage is hard?

Life lobs great big curve balls at you and that's what makes marriage hard. I've been married 7 years (together for 13) and we love each other very much. But we've been dealing with infertility throughout our entire marriage including numerous failed cycles of IVF. Alongside that, I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease which leaves me struggling to do basic tasks and in pain every day, which left me frustrated and short tempered which he bore the brunt of.
We've also had family members going through health scares including heart attacks, cancer etc. and other close relatives going through relationship break downs. It's been hard work keeping our marriage fresh, light and enjoyable with all of this stress and strain in the background but he's wonderful and I can't think of anyone I'd rather face it all with.

That sort of is my point. If the relationship or life circumstances or other person’s behaviour impacts me in too much of a negative way I wouldn’t stay in the relationship. I’ve already had job loss in my relationship and I have a chronic illness, but they don’t make me behave unreasonably to my partner, and I wouldn’t expect him to stick around if they did. My priority is me, not staying in a relationship despite it being detrimental to my wellbeing (if it became that way).

Well yes, but it’s naive to think these factors won’t impact on a marriage. They might not, but it’s also highly possible that they might.

One half a couple loses their job and has to be supported by the other. That take a toll, and can lead to resentment.

Infertility can drive a wedge in a marriage. Parenting a child with high needs can drive a wedge. Mental health issues.

And so many other issues, that you see on here day after day - men carrying on their lives like they don’t have DC, continuing with hobbies, going out with their mates, leaving the drudgery to their wives/partners.

So many couples seem to get sucked into this depressing scenario, which I’m sure wasn’t present in the early days, or they’d never have continued with the relationship, let alone got married.

All sorts of factor can change the dynamic of a relationship in ways that can’t always be predicted.

Honestly?

I think it’s the people who are aware enough that these sorts of things can and do happen, that are likely to have the mutually satisfying, long-term relationships.

Not the people blithely saying, ‘oh, our relationships is easy / plain sailing, we never have to work at it - what would be the point, if we did?’.

I have a wonderful marriage too but I'm
Married 19 years and we have been through some terrible things. People can change, circumstances changes, kids brings changes too and life definitely throws curveballs so while you're very happy now, don't underestimate what the future could throw in your path. Some people change when situations don't go the way they feel they should and to be honest it's only when you really go through tough times do you see true colours of somebody

Life can be hard and sometimes that can impact a marriage, ideally it should make weathering the difficulties easier but sometimes that depends on what else is going on. When things have been hard for me my husband has been there for me (we've been together 27 years now) and silently taken the load when I've floundered and I hope I've always done the same for him.

I think people say its work like it is a strain and I think it is more like you have to be mindful of the other person and the relationship and reorientate towards each other if you find yourself drifting off when life overwhelms you are other things (Kids, work, elderly parents, health issues etc) take up too much of your time and energy.

Some people are luckier than others and hardship isn't equally spread so not every couple has to deal with poverty, serious illness, infertility, loss of a child, mental health issues, addiction, children with special needs or especially difficult teenage years and so on. I haven't got though life scot-free but I still know I've been very lucky in many ways and I am grateful for that and don't take it for granted, I know much of it is luck, long may it last!

While I don't feel people should suffer endlessly in relationships I do think I have and would put in the work required if things did go badly off course, I wouldn't think well this isn't easy now so I'll just throw away 27 years because this should ever be hard for me. Sometimes when things have been difficult or when you've fought and come back from it you are so much stronger knowing you have weathered the storm together and come back to each other rather than never experiencing being tested, its all part of the richness of life and love and if anything it has only increased my faith, trust and love for my husband.

I think some people are wired for a lifetime of commitment, and some just aren't. For those people who aren't, marriage can e hard even there's nothing overly stressful going on.

Some people thrive on the stability and a sense of permanence - such people are temperamentally suited to a lifetime of commitment and marriages

Others thrive on excitement and need their lives to be refreshed frequently by novelty - these people are less suited to marriage, as boredom and dissatisfaction will set in even if things are otherwise going well.

My ex was very much the latter in everything - never stuck at things long-term - wanted to move house every few years, or change career. It felt inevitable that our marriage would be a casualty of that eventually, even if it did take 16 years!

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine. "Smug" my arse!

My father died whilst we were dating, and my now OH was a rock through that very difficult period of time. He was also a rock during some pretty bad days of my eating disorder. Likewise I supported him through redundancy and a complete career change. All before we even started living together! Getting each other through hard times during our "dating" helped prove our personalities and support for eachother.

Since marriage, we've been through my mother dying, OH's father suffering hospital foul ups leading to his unnecessary death, and now OH has been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. All alongside bringing up a child with ASD, another redundancy, etc.

Yes, we're still supporting each other and will continue to do so, however hard life gets. But all that comes from a rock solid foundation of getting to know each other properly, over several years, before we committed, which involved lots of long intense conversations about future money, future family, etc etc. No assumptions, everything properly discussed, planned and agreed. It was certainly not a life long marriage based on a few months of lust/passion and kicking the big issues into the long grass like so many people seem to do!

As I say, smug my arse. We've had more than our fair share of problems but right from the earliest days of dating, we got through them together which made us stronger. Believe me, the first sign of any disagreements or lack of support and he wouldn't have seen me for dust, and that would have been long before we got to any formal commitment like marriage, children or buying a house together!

Because the longer you're together the more challenges you will have to face together. Things you couldn't have ever predicted how you'd react to. Obvious ones for us are having a disabled child and severe mental health challenges. Both require work and more patience than either of us knew we possessed.

But my point is that by slowing down the dating timescale, delaying having children together, delaying marriage, delaying buying a house, etc., you have more time to get to know each other, more time for flaws to become obvious, and sadly, yes, more time for life's problems to need dealing with, all at a time when it's far easier/simpler to separate before committing yourselves, if it turns out you're not a good fit together after all.

Yes, I know you can't possibly anticipate everything that could happen, and you can't anticipate a future spouse going off the rails, having affairs, etc., but I still maintain, that slowing things down and getting to know each other properly, warts and all, before commitments, can give you pretty good indications of whether you're the right fit together, far beyond the superficial. That takes years, not just a few months.

The old adage still holds true - "Marry in haste, repent at leisure".

I really don't understand why people are in such a rush. Well, yes, to an extent, I can understand it from women in their 30s whose biological clock is ticking, or maybe where one partner is moving abroad etc thus hastening a decision, but for most people, slowing things down and waiting before having children, marriage, etc., wouldn't really matter that much, and can only be beneficial - what's the harm?

I think it is hard. I've been married for 10 years and mainly happily. However it is hard to support each other through difficult times. My dh has gone through a period of poor mental health which I found incredibly difficult and really blamed him a lot. Similarly I found the early years of having young kids hard and was probably hard to live with - snappy and impatient. I guess it is just hard to be kind and supportive to another person through good and bad times.

People change - I am not the same person at 50 as I was when I met DH at 25. Whether or not you both change in a way that keeps you simpatico is just luck I think.

Plus it becomes much harder to be nice to someone who lives with you when there are other stresses in your life. Have another baby and come back to us when they are 4 and 2, or 15 and 13!

You sound like you're fairly young, healthy, nice squishy baby, probably no money troubles, supportive partner - that's all great. You would choose the things you have now.

In the longer term you will have to do some things you would not choose to do - sacrifices around career, where you live, what you spend money on etc. You're not free to choose absolutely anything because you have to consider the needs of your partner and child.

There are many good points to having a partner and family but it does put constraints on what you do, even in a healthy and supportive relationship. And it's hard to abide by that, year in, year out.

Very often life events change people a bit and the relationship is a bit less healthy, resentment sets in - it becomes even harder work and lonely. And sometimes something like an affair or gambling problem etc just ups and whups you on the arse.

People change, people make mistakes, life throws things at you, raising children can be challenging, etc.

The idea that you will go through years of these challenges and always like and get on with your spouse is a pretty tall order. Marriage or any long term relationship is hard because you need to find ways to stay together and work together during times when you might not see eye to eye or even like each other.

This.

Their breathing and eating become the soundtrack to your life.

Honestly, I don't think marriage is particularly hard. I think any long relationship has its challenges. But dh and I have been married 12 years now and I don't think it's been particularly difficult. It's certainly been the easiest, most drama-free relationship I've ever had. I think any long relationship will bring with it tough times, because life is tough, so you will have to navigate grief, financial stresses, house moves, family drama, job losses, raising children, etc. together, which you don't need to do in a new relationship where you are just dating and it's all fun and rainbows.

But I definitely wouldn't call marriage hard. If anything, it's made my life as a whole easier. I have built in support, I have fewer financial worries because there is two of us carrying the load, I get breaks from childrearing because I have a co-parent literally in the same house, I am never really bored or lonely because I always have dh to turn to if needed. But I do have a happy marriage and a good supportive relationship. I suspect if it's not happy or supportive, it would be quite hard.

I do think there is a longstanding narrative especially passed down from our parents and grandparents' generations that 'marriage is hard work.' And I think a lot of this comes from a place of people having to keep marriages going, at least on the face of it, for survival. My grandmother didn't work, didn't drive a car, didn't have a bank account of her own for quite a good portion of her life. So without marriage, she would have been left pretty high and dry as she has no recourse to any sort of social safety net or outside support system. Holding it all together, even if unhappy, was necessary and probably quite hard work. I don't know that we have this same narrative now, as I don't think marriage is quite as inescapable as it was in the 1930s/40s/50s.

@mindutopia

But I definitely wouldn't call marriage hard. If anything, it's made my life as a whole easier. I have built in support, I have fewer financial worries because there is two of us carrying the load, I get breaks from childrearing because I have a co-parent literally in the same house, I am never really bored or lonely because I always have dh to turn to if needed. But I do have a happy marriage and a good supportive relationship. I suspect if it's not happy or supportive, it would be quite hard.

I fully agree. Marriage has definitely made my life better, easier and more fulfilling. As you say, two people earning means you're more financially secure and can have a better standard of living - it also evens out the "bad" periods between jobs, low earnings when part time, starting a business, etc. as you still have one wage to rely on which gives you options. Likewise, sharing the burden of things like family bereavements, a disabled child, our respective serious health problems, etc. I know, with 100% certainty, that my life would have been harder had it not been for OH, who has been a rock through difficult times in my life, and in return I've been a rock for him, particularly with the deaths of our parents. Even just having someone solid to discuss things with is a massive bonus, whether it's jobs/career, holidays, buying a new car, home improvements, etc. I shudder to think how I'd cope if I'd had to navigate all those things on my own.

I fully agree. Marriage has definitely made my life better, easier and more fulfilling.

I agree with this. Together for 20 years and married for 15 of those, I don’t think we are still in the honeymoon period.

@harerunner your post has really resonated with me and explains a lot. Thank you 🙂

We've been together 12 years, married for 2. Yes some days/times are hard but that's life. We've had challenges like everyone - miscarriage, moving house, job stuff, illness. It would have all been harder on my own.

The hard bit is that navigating these issues often involves compromise - when a decision has to be made about where you live/whether career ambitions have to be sacrificed to enable childcare/how money is spent/becoming a carer for elderly parents/children/each other.

e.g. What if partners disagree about how much time should be spent visiting in-laws? Either party may be happy seeing them daily or never - the problem is not the inlaws themselves but the need to find a compromise.

context is key here though right? everyone ‘works’ to some extent on relationships of all kinds. It’s how we separate the people we value from people we don’t value surely; the effort made to understand their perspectives, challenge them to do/be better and to be challenged too.. surely all this counts as work and you don’t mean to say you never do this?
My personal opinion is that all this is beautiful :)

@user1497207191 Whereas I do agree with you that it makes a lot of sense to really get to know someone before committing to them (whatever happened to growing a relationship through "going out" for a few months before committing to anything?), I do think you are completely over simplifying relationships.

Yes, dh and I had talked about having dc, and we had that vague knowledge that babies wake in the night but until I experienced it, I had no idea what PND would be like.....how having a baby that slept in 2 hour spells then was awake for 2 hour spells felt ...... that then combining that with sudden and unexpected bereavement ....... etc etc - it's just not on your radar when you are young (and, luckily for many, nor when you are older).

Even if I did know that, then I would still have chosen to spend the ret of my life with my dh, because, looking back over 30 years+ we have been together, the whole wealth of positives are far more than the difficult times, but I don't think it helps anyone to pretend there aren't times when you have had to work at it.

Like when someone wins an Olympic Medal, or the Rugby World Cup (as it is on now), they will say they life is just wonderful, and being a professional athlete is the best job in the World, but it doesn't mean that, on many days when they've had to get up early to go training in the rain or sleet, that they haven't had to really work at it. It's the same with marriage. It is worth working through the difficult times, to strengthen that relationship.

Because you have to bargain.

I'd echo what posters have said about life being hard - but also, you might meet someone else you fancy/click with at a time when your DH is being difficult to you - or vice versa.

Then you might have to rekindle your love/put extra effort in/go through challenging times in order to get your relationship back on track.

If you're together, say, 40 years you're going to have some hard times - not just in general, but in the relationship.

I've been with my DH 12 years and I've had probably two terrible years, two average and eight of them have been amazing. We could've easily split during the hard times, but we persevered, and that's why people say "marriage is tough"

We’ve been together for 20 years and until very recently I thought we were bomb proof - he’s my best friend, a great partner and a lovely dad. It has not been hard.

but the last few months. OMG. I think peri menopause is not helping but it has been so difficult. We are now going to relationship counselling and the counsellor told me most of the couple she sees are our age and stage - it’s a common time to hit speed bumps and split up.