Throughout your engagement, and probably also on your wedding day, you will be thrown many pearls of wisdom from those you know and love to help you to maintain a happy and successful marriage.
“Don’t go to bed angry,” they say. “Happy wife, happy life,” is another zinger. Or what about “Keep your arguments clean and the sex dirty.” Chances are, you have heard at least one of them. But while these people mean well, it would be refreshing for them to be a bit more open about what marriage is really like.
The newlywed glow will eventually wear off, and it’s great for couples to know what to expect when it does. Here are 8 things no one ever tells newlyweds…
You will both change
When you think about how much you have changed as a person since your teens, it’s impossible to think that you will get to your senior years without evolving as a person several more times.
As you and your partner navigate your way through life, you will experience many things together, but will also come across things you need to work through on your own. These differences can change you as a person, both for the better and the worse.
This will also affect your relationship, and married couples need to learn how to grow and adapt to one another as the years roll by. You won’t remain frozen in time right at the point when you said, “I do.”
Sometimes one of you is the problem
“What!?” I hear you say, but it’s important to think about the possible hurdles you might encounter throughout your marriage. When people talk about hard times, they could mean financial, health-related, or any other number of obstacles, but the fact of the matter is that often these hard times will affect just one of you – and your partner will be left with the burden of supporting the household while you work through it.
Ideally, this journey will be carried out together, because these “hard times” can have a devastating impact on marriages if each party tries to climb this steep mountain alone.
Little annoyances can turn into major gripes
The little things that bother you when times are good, like how he likes to have his meals at a certain time each night, or how she will disappear into another room for hours on end to chat to friends on the phone, could turn into major trigger points when times are bad.
There will be turbulent times for any married couple, and small annoyances can transform into major gripes when you are in a rough patch. Try to patch up these little things when you are in a smooth-sailing portion of your marriage, so they don’t turn into giant rocks that will sink your yacht when seas get turbulent.
The unspoken chore roster
If both of you were living separately before you got married, you no doubt were doing your own household chores. You were both cooking, cleaning (even the bathroom) and doing the groceries.
But once you are married, you somehow fall into a routine where certain jobs fall onto one or the other of you, and it just becomes “the way it is.” Obviously, the person who lands the bathrooms draws the short straw, so rather than allowing that person to shoulder that responsibility for the rest of your lives, try to change things up from time to time.
Some things you will never agree on
There is no doubt that communication is the cornerstone of a successful marriage, but there will be sometimes when you can talk things through until you are blue in the face (or the shouty voices are coming out…) and there is still no sign of a resolution in sight.
Sometimes, you just have to lay your views out on the table, get everything off your chest and then agree to disagree. It’s really not the ideal situation, but it is a fact of life.
If times are rough, don’t take on new projects
Most people know that having a baby is not the magic potion to fixing a marriage if you are already in an unsteady place… but you might not know that taking on any major challenge is just as detrimental.
Moving house, getting a new pet, undertaking renovations, getting a loan for a new car… basically anything that can create additional stress is a big no-no. It will only serve to widen the chasm between you by ignoring the bigger picture.
Instead, dial things back so you have the time and emotional availability to begin to isolate the problem, so you can try to work through it.
Synchronized bedtimes will disappear
Jokes have been told as long as time has existed that you can hear crickets in the bedrooms of married couples. While it doesn’t have to be that extreme, you will find that the days when you would retire to the boudoir together will begin to drop off – mostly because you will find yourselves on different schedules.
You might want to go to the gym of an evening, or your partner might stay up to watch sports some nights, and before you know it, it’s more common than not to be on separate sleep clocks. This has no bearing on the strength of your marriage though!
Nobody’s marriage is perfect all the time
A couple may look picture perfect on the surface, but know that every marriage has struggles and frustrations. They may be fleeting for some couples, or ever-present for others, but every married couple has had to work through some type of challenge in their time together.
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