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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
ML is talking about if marriage is "hard" or not
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/1/60385726/ShowThread.aspx
Thoughts?
Maybe since we don't have to worry about making our marriages look good, we can be more honest 
(THAT WAS A JOKE. Chill out, MLers.)
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Re: ML is talking about if marriage is "hard" or not
I don't have the energy to read through all of those responses but I think that my marriage was harder than others, obviously because it failed and the ML posters are mostly still married. I even recall saying to XH, "Marriage shouldn't be this difficult--these should be the GOOD years!"
Some marriages are more difficult than others depending on life circumstances. Aside from XH's addiction and general douchebaggery, we dealt with things that made our marriage hard. Moving to another country a month after we got married, where I not only didn't speak the language but didn't have any friends and worked from home so I couldn't make any, was very difficult. Lack of job security, his depression and drug use only added to the stress. Add in the emotional and verbal, and threats of physical abuse and yeah, my marriage was really freaking hard.
Marriage can be easy. There will inevitably be hard parts but it shouldn't be so hard.
Out of sheer laziness I'm not going to read the thread.
I didn't find marriage to be hard. Quite the opposite actually. Life circumstances could be difficult at times, but the majority of the time I felt like I had a good support system. Until, well, I didn't.
I bet if you asked my XH this question you would get a very different answer.
ETA: I agree that marriage takes work, but it shouldn't be hard work. It should be good work. As someone wiser than me stated on TIP, difficulties in a marriage should come from external factors (birth of a child, death of a parent, etc.), not internal (conflicting personalities, differences in life goals, different values, etc.). My XH and I were able to lean on each other during health issues or job loss - it was the part of our relationship that worked the best. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to sustain it. Being an adult and dealing with adult issues wasn't very fun for him, so he checked out.
So, hmmm, maybe put me down as one of those whose marriage ended because the reality didn't live up to the expectations that marriage should be easy.
It would have been easier if we had played more scrabble. jk
I think overall I woudlnt' say it was hard as much as I'd say it had it's ups and it's downs. I have 70-80 hour weeks, he traveled weekly for 11 months of the year. That meant any actual time we had together was supposed to be spent having quality time, which then became this huge pressure to make sure everything was perfect, which caused its own issues.
There can be hard times, but it should not be a constant battle.
I think someone who thinks it is always going to be easy is just as likely to be divorced as those who are constantly fighting.
There is hard and there is HARD and a few of the comments have me thinking that divorce is in the cards, or should be in the cards.
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
I agree that marriage is work. But overall I think all relationships take some work/effort to maintain. Its a matter of when it becomes all work and no fun that things change (at least for me).
People who think marriage is easy or all sunshine and unicorns all the time are delusional....Hard times come and you work together to get through them...if you arent willing to do the work, dont get married...
I don't have the energy to read thru the thread either, but my 2 cents:
Marriage is like anything else in life - sometimes it's easy breezy, but sometimes it's extremely difficult. I also think some marriages are probably easier than others. The one key thing people so often forget about is this: there are TWO people in a marriage and you only have control over your own actions, no ones marriage is failproof.
I agree with the above.
I like this.
You know what would be really fun?
If one of you made a troll and made an edict about each poster as to whether or not their marriage will last.
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
Like, Magic 8 Ball style? I'm speaking for myself here, but I don't know nearly enough about ML to make an educated guess. Except for Floyd. Ah, Floyd.
Me too. Very well said!
I don't think my marriage is hard. We have fights, and sometimes have to work on making time for each other, but none of it is hard. Granted, we are both big communicators, so that makes things way easier. Most of our fights and stuff come from work stress/money issues and yes we have to work on compromises and we had to learn each other's "buttons" and stuff (although we figured that out before marriage).
My relationship with X was hard. I kept my mouth shut about a lot and tried not to upset him all the time and I felt like I was constantly trying to make things up to him. With H, I say how I feel and we both work to make things better. Then again, we have only been married for a year and a half. I'll come back in 4 more years and we'll see.
This is me idealizing, but I don't think any marriage is perfect. Period. I think if you have mostly hard times versus good times, there is an issue.
I had 70% bad times with my ex.
I have maybe 15% hard times (not bad) with my current SO. We mostly have a great time together. I can imagine having kids would make this more difficult, but still not to a point where it should be bad.
I don't understand why most people think hard= fighting. There are so muh more to that. When you're married you can't take your own decisions. You have to think about someone else. For example: you get a huge promotion at work but you have to move 2.000 miles away. If you accept it, that means your spouse has to leave his/her job that he/she loves with no guarantee that they'll find something they'll like as much. Are you willing to take the risk? What if your spouse is unhappy and is resentful? But if you say no to the promotion, are you sure than in 1 year you won't regret it?
There are so many situations like that that can make your marriage harder.
ITA...
I don't see what is hard about this. You go home, talk to your spouse, and come up with the best decision for you both. Before we even got married H and I talked about moving for jobs. There are certain areas we would be willing to go, others we wouldn't be. H knows that when I graduate we may have to move to where ever I get a job.
There are always compromises to be made, but I think that is true with life. Even without a spouse there are pros and cons to moving for a job. Leaving friends and family, what if you don't like the new area or have trouble making friends. Sure there are MORE things to consider when you have a spouse, but H and I are pretty good at compromising. We compromised when buying a house. There were certain things we each HAD to have and we worked from there. We just work well together.
I guess I don't see that as "hard" I see it as life. Sure there are moments where life gets hard, but overall, my spouse makes my life easier, not harder.
I think that you have to work to keep the spark going and keep connected but I don't think it should be nearly as much work as mine was. Things were "hard" even when they were perfect but shiit really hit the fan when life circumstances hit us. We had zero tools to communicate and really we were pretty much doomed from the get go.
I think that life is hard, which can strain a marriage, but a marriage itself shouldn't be hard.
Seriously? Have you ever done it? Oh never mind I guess you'll just compromise and it will all work out from there...
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
I personally think marriage is a choice. Either you are committed for the long haul or you aren't. Of couse this doesn't apply in extreme situations of abuse or drug use. I don't think anyone should be forced to live like that.
While I never made it to the altar I was engaged and it became very clear at the end that my FI was not committed to our relationship or family. If we had of gotten married it would have ended anyways because he clearly didn't want to commit and work on things. We had incompatabilities but I felt that at the core we had similar values and love and could have made it for the long haul.