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S/O When did you give up?
I was reading through the "When did you give up?" thread, and it piqued my curiosity.
So TIP's official position (and by that I mean many of the regs) is that there are never hard times between two people in a marriage? It has to be puppies and rainbows all the time between the two of you?
Two people are going to disagree on things sometimes, and yeah, you might even hit a patch where you're not working together like you normally do and one of you has to step up and say, "Wait a minute. This isn't us. What do we need to do to get back to that?" Now, I don't think that the vast majority of the marriage should be hard, but to say that two people will /never/ have to work hard or go through hard times is just silly.
You may be thinking, "She's only been married for a month. WTF does she know?" Yes, I'll give you that. But at the same time, I have been with my husband for 9 years. When we were younger, we started getting all dramatic and our communication and day-to-day patterns were awful. It was not a great time. And we were both very young. But we went to couples therapy and learned how to communicate within our relationship and keep our commitment to making the other person feel loved and respected the main priority. Since then we have become closer and closer over the last 5 years and now we have the best relationship I could ever imagine. If I would have just given up when it was "hard" that never would have happened.
On the other hand, if we would have gone to therapy and nothing changed, then yes, I would have ended it. Change can happen in a relationship if you're both fully committed to it (and you have something worth fixing). If not, then yeah, you're wasting your time.
That's my $0.02. I'm sure now I'll get flamed or something. Whatever.
Re: S/O When did you give up?
You didn't get the attention you were looking for in the other post?
Is that the flaming you wanted?
I feel like you don't get what "TIP" is all about.
Please show me where someone said this.
Nobody said marriage is never going to involve work. We said that marriage shouldn't be hard work everygoddamnday and that the majority of the hard times in life should not be caused by your marital relationship.
LOL, this is exactly what I was going to say.
Eh. I'm just cranky today.
I do think that you misinterpreted what people said in the other thread (which is probably why you were ignored). Of course marriage is not puppies and rainbows all the time, but it shouldn't be a chore to work on your problems. Yes, you have to put in effort to get over bumps, but a good relationship is overall an easy relationship. You shouldn't have to struggle just to be together. KWIM?
What other post?
And OP, who on TIP said marriage is supposed to be puppies and rainbows?
It's a simple concept, really. Marriage shouldn't be hard. It should be quite easy, especially if you're not married to anasshole.
Couples can experience issues from time to time and work to resolve them, but it shouldn't be hard to do so.
There is this misconception that so many people have that you have to deal with assholelike behavior from your spouse because that is what marriage is about.
It's not true and it's a harmful way of looking at marriage.
//Marriage takes work, but it shouldn't be that hard. Care to share the issues you and your H are having?///The thing is, if you think it is over, or if you have to ask, it usually is.////I don't believe marriage should be hard. At minimum, the majority of your difficulties should be from outside forces, not internal ones. Obviously marriage is going to be hard when dealing with special needs children, elderly parents, financial troubles beyond your control, or other things. But self inflicted shiit shouldn't happen, kwim?////Hindsight said it really well. Life is hard, your marriage shouldn't be. //
I think it's great that you recognized there were communication issues in your relationship and you both worked on them to improve things.
That, however, is not what people around here are typically talking about when they talk about marriage shouldn't have to be hard work. That's the day in day out stuff that never gets better, either because one or both parties is not willing to work on underlying issues, don't recognize the issues, don't care, etc. etc.
Come on, do you really not get the difference, or are you just trying to be cute?
I agree with this.
I also agree that you shouldn't have to put up with an azzhole all the time. It just seemed like everyone was saying, "marriage isn't hard." I was just saying that it can be sometimes. That's all. I guess we mostly agree then. Sorry to have wasted your time.
Right. Nobody said "you will never ever have hard times". They said that marriage shouldn't suck your soul away and drain you of happiness on a daily basis.
I don't get how you don't see a distinction.
All of those quotes are of people saying marriage shouldn't be HARD (and it shouldn't be), not that it doesn't take work. Of course marriage takes work. But it shouldn't take much work, day to day.
Every time someone says that marriage is hard and takes a lot of work, I think of this quote I heard (that was supposed to be romantic, I think): "Every morning when I wake up, I make a conscious decision to love my husband that day."
Do you not see the difference between what we said, and saying that marriage should always be 100% puppies and rainbows and there will NEVER be any difficulties to work through? Your reading comprehension needs work.
Marriage shouldn't be hard in and of itself. It may require work to get through a specific issue, for example if your communication needs work. But marriage shouldn't be a constant struggle.
Seriously? Of course people are going to have arguments/disagreements about a lot of things - differences of opinions, thoughts, ways of doing things, etc., but if you have a loving partner who respects you and your feelings than getting through those types of issues shouldn't be relationship ending issues.
If you're with a man who puts you down, doesn't respect the fact that you have different thoughts/feelings/opinions on things or just plain won't work to really listen to who you are (and vice versa) than I think it's going to be hard to have a successful relationship. There is a way to fight fair about things and be open to who the other person is and working towards growing in your relationship. That doesn't mean it's all puppies and rainbows, but it at least means that in times of disagreement, you know your partner still has your back.
Since you quoted me "I agree with PP, marriage isn't supposed to be hard in and of itself. That's what some people say, but I think they are either in crappy marriages or they are confusing a hard marriage for just the work it takes to be in any relationship" I'll reply.
I stand by what I said. A happy marriage should not be hard, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take work. Maybe I should explain what I mean by hard. A hard marriage is when you and your H can't go more then two weeks without arguing and yelling at each other, a hard marriage is when your H throws divorce around like it's a game, a hard marriage is when all your friends and family notice you aren't the same happy person you were before marriage. Those are just a few examples of a hard marriage. So, OP, if you were going through those things in your marriage, your H refused to go to counseling and you were all cried out and tired of begging him to give a crap about your marriage, what exactly would you do?
No one said marriage, like any relationship, doesn't take work, all relationships take work. Please tell me you see a difference in a hard marriage and a healthy marriage that takes work from both partners to maintain.
Oh dear. I was waiting for that to happen....
Well, she's failing miserably.
I wouldn't say improving your communication is "hard work." It certainly wasn't what I was referring to when I said the majority of your tough times should come from the outside. But honestly, any internal troubles you should see improvement on once you identify the issue and talk it out. And it should be stuff that has merely slipped.
I don't think marriage should include hard work like relearning trust, setting up and following boundaries, not staying out all night with coworkers, or otherwise being a long suffering spouse waiting for shiit to improve while the douche does what s/he wants, or both sides playing tit for tat.
Honestly, if you can't look your spouse dead in the eye, tell them there is a problem and see change or at least huge attempts at change inside of a month, your marriage is harder work than it should be. And this only includes less obvious problems.
Click me, click me!
I just didn't get that you all had a whole definition of "hard." I was defining hard as "interim hard times." You were defining hard as, "hard all the time."
Currently Reading: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Oh he has like five minutes to agree there's a problem and kiss my toes out of gratefulness that I didn't leave his ass. LOL
Click me, click me!
Again, it depends on why it's hard. If you're interim hard times are due to your spouse having an inappropriate relationship with some other heifer every 6 months, uhm, boy has got to go.
If you're talking about a spouse who struggles with bouts of depression every 6 months, than obviously, that's something you need to handle. But even then, you have to assess what your spouse is doing to help themselves. Are you helping him or are you carrying him and letting him getting away with bullshiit because he's depressed?
I do think that some marriages need more to work but again, those should be because of outside influences. I would fully expect my marriage to undergo hard times if my H's mother died. Surely he isn't expecting marriage to be sunshine and roses when I'm spending most of the day laying on the bed trying not to throw up.
Click me, click me!
Well, the thing is that it was hard, because my boyfriend (at the time) and I were azzholes to each other all the time. It was hard. It was not healthy. We were also 20 years old. We then learned how not to be azzholes to each other. We also just plain grew up quite a bit. We were able to get to healthy because we were both committed to it. And it took a lot of hard work to get there.
Hindsight is 20/20 and I think if I didn't know how it would turn out, I probably would tell my 20 year old self to gtfo of that unhealthy relationship. But, it did change. So, IDK. Maybe that doesn't realistically happen in most relationships. But that is why I'm a fan of couples therapy over just making blanket statements about what marriage should be. *sigh* IDK.
Have you been on TIP that long?
Couple's therapy is 7 times out of 10 the go-to response.
Emily, couples therapy only works when both people want to go. There are so many spouses who straight out refuse to go.
That's gonna make for a hard marriage when your H is basically saying, nope, I don't want to work on our problems. Or even worse, if he doesn't think there are any problems and you're miserable.
You and your H realized you guys had issues and you worked them out. That's good, but it doesn't happen like that for everybody.
Yeah, I know. I was just going through the thought process I guess.
I do not recommend counseling for you and this post.