Newlywed Fears and Growing Pains

Re: Newlywed Fears and Growing Pains

• joleri23 member

  

  May 2015

  Soon after getting married I realized I felt like an old woman. Most of my friends are still not married (even these years later) and I had a minor identity crisis, thinking they wouldn't want to hang out anymore. It was all in my head, and my solution was to host a girls' night.

  
  

  Other than that, there are those few moments after you have a huge fight when you realize you're stuck with that person, but those are few and far between and most of the time I find the thought of being together forever comforting.

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• BlueBirdMB member

  

  May 2015

  I really didn't feel like there were growing pains.  I'm also one of my only friends who is married, but I don't feel like my life changed in any drastic way once we got married, but maybe it's because we were together 4 years before we got married.  I think you should have already come together before you got engaged or you shouldn't get engaged.  During our engagement, I felt like we got down the nitty gritty of how to have a healthy relationship, which set a good foundation for our marriage.

  
  

  I'm petrified of the growing pains of having a baby.  We were never going to have a baby right after getting married, but we're sneaking up on the place in time when we thought we'd have a baby and I'm freaking out.  I'm scared of my marriage changing, of losing my husband, etc.  I guess I just love how things are now and I'm afraid of how it will change.

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• dutchgirl76 member

  

  May 2015

  Congratulations on your upcoming marriage!

  
  

  My husband and I were together 4.5 years (living together for 2) before we got married so I don't feel like much changed. One growing pain I felt was combining the bank accounts/finances. When we lived together before marriage we each had our own "money", we split all the bills down the middle and put a certain amount in savings every month for the wedding. After that it was up to you how to spend it, however for the most part this worked. Hopefully you have an easier time, but you both have to set realistic expectations as you're both used to spending and your habits might be different. For example, my husband and I both had to buy a new car in the same year. I'm not a fan of car payments and was thankful to have been saving because we knew we both had bad cars. My husband's always driven crappy cars because he wasn't responsible with saving and his credit. He expected to just take out a decent size loan to buy something new and fancy. He had to learn to compromise that we could buy 2 economy cars for the price of 1 loan he wanted. Sure it's not fancy but it gets him to work and I can go on vacation and pay my mortgage. Stuff like that someone will have to give in, so be fair and meet her halfway (i.e. you both get a reasonably priced whatever and don't end up with debt)

  
  

  My fear now is my husband's job. When we dated he wasn't doing this job, he had a regular 7-3 M-F schedule which allowed for us to spend just about every weekend and holiday together. After we got engaged he went full time into public service and now has a rotating schedule with day and evening shifts all year round. This eliminates most holidays together(including the 4th of July, Memorial Day etc.) and creates periods of time (2-3 days/nights) where we physically don't see each other. We also have to live within a 15 mile radius of the town where he works. Before getting engaged we agreed we'd never live in the town where he works so this is very hard for me to adjust as I pushed for moving out of state pre-marriage. His schedule is so tough I can honestly say I probably would never have pushed for marriage if he had the schedule during the years we dated. The moral of this story, be prepared that either of your careers can change which will change the dynamic of your marriage. I've been subject to outsourcing and didn't have the freedom to move to find a better job, that's frustrating when it's someone else holding you back. If you plan of having children most likely at least one of your work schedules will change and that will be a growing pain getting used to not seeing each other and making such a huge adjustment.

  
  

  Finally, I did keep most of my friends, although like PP's most still aren't married (which is fine.) Just make sure you keep in touch with your single friends, do a girls or guys night, especially for the singles so they don't feel like a 3rd wheel.

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