Married Life
srfr8908
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Getting Through the 1st Year
in Married Life
Everyone told me that the 1st year would be hard, and that then the 7th year is hard, too. What are you finding/did you find about the 1st year? Is/Was it difficult?
Re: Getting Through the 1st Year
It's not an absolute, but I do agree that a large part of the "Hard" comes from the days when people didn't tend to live together before marriage. Living w/ a new person and sharing your day to day life is really what is hard.
And this concept is just still always passed down.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
We've been married 7 months and it's been overall easier than some of the time we were dating. We moved in together and merged some finances a year or so before getting married, so not a lot changed when we actually got married.
As for the 7th year, I think that's probably a load of cr@p. It seems awfully arbitrary to me. For many couples, perhaps that's when their children become more demanding, or when their parents' health begins to fail, or many other events that can rock a steady marriage. But I'm sure all of that varies greatly from couple to couple.
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. SeussMy H and I will celebrate our 1 year anniversary next month and there have definitely been some struggles along the way, but nothing that we can't handle.
We did not live together before we got married. Obviously, that was the biggest adjustment. While adjusting to living together has been difficult at times, it's also been one of the most exciting and fun parts about getting married. I have enjoyed getting used to living with him and have loved getting used to the new roles we have in each others' lives as husband and wife.
Not surprisingly, another big adjustment has been combining finances. Thankfully, my H and I have very similar spending habits, so we definitely see eye to eye in that area. But going from making all of your own financial decisions to making them with someone else is difficult. H and I have a system that works for us, but it wouldn't work for everyone. He has his own account and I have mine. We pay certain bills from his account and certain bills from mine. If we do things together (going to a concert, dinner, etc) we decide together which account to use. Usually we decide based on who gets paid next or who has more extra $$ in their account at that time. He has access to my account and I have access to his, but we rarely use one another's accounts and if so, we always tell each other before doing so. Like I said, this works for us. If it ever stops working for us, we'll change it, but if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
I just found out that I lost my job, which totally sucks and definitely throws a wrench in our plans to save and start a family soon. I will get paid through August, so I have a little bit of time to find a job which is good, but I HAVE to work. We can't afford our bills if I don't have a job. Naturally, I have been freaking out about it, but my H has been SO supportive. He is so confident in me that I'll find a job, and we're hoping it will be an even better one. I was overqualified for my job anyway, so this will probably be a blessing in disguise. This is the first big bump in the road since we got married, but it seems like it's made us even stronger.
We're 8 months in and it's been smooth sailing. We have also been together 9 years, lived together for 5 years, 2 of which were in the house we own. So no drastic changes for us. We got through the "7 year itch" (at least during our dating years) although I don't think either of us were particularly itchy!
I think if you go into year 1 expecting it to be hard, you're going to make it hard. Like a self fulfilling prophecy. Little things that didn't bother you before you got married shouldn't bother you after you say "I do." That said, if you're living together for the first time, or abstained from sex until marriage you might have a harder time settling into "married life." Meaning if being married means a whole new lifestyle for you both, it's easier to encounter surprises along the way. If that's the case you have to take things as they come and rather than be discouraged, re-frame it - view it as an opportunity to grow as an individual and as a couple.
Our first year of marriage was great. All the stress of planning the wedding was over and we were really focused on our relationship. We sold our place and moved half way across the country. We didn't know anyone here when we moved, so it was just the two of us with lots of time together. We now have a closer friendship than we had before we got married.
At times it was stressful, going through so many changes within the first year, but it turned out to be really good for us. We did, however, live together and have joint finances before we got married; mostly because we had joint expenses. I don't know how big of a factor that was in our transition to married life, as it wasn't a rough transition into living together either.
We've been married almost 8 years. The 1st year was easy for us. The 7th year was... not so bad, at least considering we spent it long distance. The year before we got married was brutal. Actually, our entire 2-year engagement was pretty bad. The year DH quit grad school and spent unemployed wasn't so hot either, and the year I had an abusive team lead at work was dreadful (which sort of had nothing to do with my marriage, but DH's refusal to be part of the solution for a very long time became a big problem).
Good and bad years happen. Bad years may happen more often statistically at certain times, but there are no hard and fast rules. Transitions, even good ones, are often more challenging because you have to re-negotiate the terms of your relationship, shoot, often of your whole life. For us, navigating the transitions from college to post-college + the transition to living together on a full time/permanent basis was a lot more difficult on us individually and on our relationship than getting married. Not to mention that many things we were trying to do to prepare for marriage (things like knit-picking everything) were really unpleasant for our relationship (I imagine that a lot of people who don't do this before marriage instead do it during the first year). Actually, after all that turmoil, getting married was a huge relief in comparison--at least whatever happened, I knew we were in it together, and I felt pretty good about that.
I didn't find the first year or the 7th year to be overly hard. But we lived together 4 years before we got married so we had very little adjusting to do for the 1st year. 7th year was a blur since we were dealing with a newborn. Any issues we had then were related to adjusting to parenthood, not it being our 7th year of marriage.
I think those generalizations don't apply to most people. What years are hard depends more on life circumstances and stages than the amount of time married.
Our first year was 100% total wedded bliss, so is this second year. We're still all giddy with the excitement of calling each other "husband" and "wife", still joke about it and are so happy to be married, despite having been together forever and having lived together for most of it. We actually never heard such generalizations, but everyone we know knows how long it's been for us, I'd be surprised if they mentioned anything of the sort. We've been together longer than our respective sets of parents have been, LOL. We also didn't go through the so-called 7th year crisis. Guess that's a myth too.
:: shrugs ::
I don't remember the 1st year or the 7th year being a struggle.
My first marriage the first year didn't seem to difficult to me but funny that we got divorced in our 7th year.
I am remarried now and we have been married for 8 months...some difficulties but more because we have kids from previous marriages so we have the whole step parent life to adjust to. My ex-husband is completely different that my husband now so that has been a little different to adjust to but definitely for the better.
Since DH and I didn't live together before we got married, we've had a lot of adjusting to do but for the most part finally being together and married has been the best part of this year.
Our big challenges have come from outside our marriage; we're both very close to our families back home and moving halfway across the country has been very difficult. Finances have been tight as I haven't been able to find work and DH has had some unexpected challenges with his workplace too. Add in other minor frustrations and it hasn't been an easy year.
However, DH and I have really had to learn to rely on each other through all the hard stuff which I think is very important to a marriage. Despite all the challenges it has been a great start to married life and once we get all this sorted out I think we'll be able to laugh at all the things we had to do without when we started out.
Our first year together was pretty good, the 3 year was a real issue, but by the 7 year we were completely settle.
It?s a matter of patience, a good set of laughs and lots and lots of love.
We're almost at one year and it's been pretty good. We didn't live together before getting married, but we spent quite a bit of time together at each other's places, so there weren't any big surprises. I think our biggest struggle has been H's bouts of unemployment. I find it really difficult to get any work done at home when he's around, and when I go out and then come back to a house that doesn't meet my standards of cleanliness, I sometimes get frustrated and H feels that his efforts go unappreciated. That's something we've been working on lately.
We're coming up to two years of marriage, and honestly the first year was easy. I had a rough patch right after christmas that first year, but that was because it was the first christmas I'd ever spent away from my family.
These days, it seems like everythings going great for H but I'm spiraling down again. I think the problem's just me - my perception of things maybe but these last few months have been really really hard. I'm going to be talking to him about stuff next week and hoping we can put the third year back on track again.
Proud Newbie Gardener
We were young (21/23) when we tied the knot and everyone told us that "marriage is hard work". Of course, now that I think back, everyone who said that to me was either my age and had never been married (and were not ready for the commitment at that time) or had been divorced at least once.
We lived together 3 years before getting married... and moved in together pretty soon after starting dating... neither of us are the type to rush things but it was weird how it just felt right. I think our "rough patch" was when we combined finances when we moved in together... so the first year of living together was probably the hardest for us. We had to get used to talking about money and budgeting.... I was only 18 at the time and it was difficult for us to figure out that the money we earned was not our money to keep. We are both pretty responsible with money though and we don't like to go out and spend money so that helps. We split the bills and were each responsible for our own share. I don't really remember any bad fights.. but we really just don't fight. It was a fun time getting to know each other and falling in love. The hardest part is we were both in college and working at the same time and money created stress for us.
I always think back to this time we had to gather all the change from around the house and go to a coin star in Kroger. We had $13 to get a weeks worth of groceries... we ate a lot of ramen noodles, $1 instant dinners, etc. We didn't pity ourselves though, we just worked harder and laughed a lot. It was actually a good time and one of my favorite memories now. A lot of people would have asked for help, we have always just made it work. Sometimes its hard to believe how different life is for us... now we are young adults, own a beautiful home, and don't have money stress. Finishing our undergrad degrees and maturing helped a lot with that. I will always feel so fortunate that we married young and got to go through all of this together. We learned to pull together in hard times and just to enjoy being with each other. We also learned, when money was tight, that a good board game is 10 times better than the best cable program.
Fast forward to today. July marks two years of marriage and May (right now) marks 5 years of being a couple. Our first year of marriage was great, and our second year has been our best year yet. Of course we get on each others nerves sometimes and little things happen but he is my best friend and every day I feel so lucky to call him by husband. It is sort of surreal though, I can't believe it is almost 2 years.
I'll watch out for that 7 year itch, but I have a feeling we will be just fine.