I've been married for a long time

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Could be. A lot of it was dark comedy like the OP. But there were genuine lamentations, empathy and awkward silences. Kind of like the vibe in this thread.
 
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Since I mentioned Liz Taylor, Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe is a hard film to watch, I couldn’t finish it.
 
I’ve been married 46 years now. I’ve watched many marriages dissolve and from what I’ve witnessed…anecdotal only…it usually boiled down to one of them assuming the other would change in some way or money problems just put too much stress on them.

While people do change somewhat as they age, usually what the are is what they’ll continue to be. Reckless with money? Won’t change. Love to hang with their friends? Won’t change. Roving eyes? Won’t change.

When my hubby and I started talking of marriage we were painfully honest with each other. He’s a fisherman. It’s his passion and I knew I could either fish with him or let him go on his fishing trips. No way would I try to make him into something he’s not! He’s my best friend.

I don’t wake up every morning being madly in love with him but I do wake up every morning knowing my best friend is beside me. I not only love him, I trust him, I admire him and I’m amazed that he loves me, too.
 
Pattylt said:
While people do change somewhat as they age, usually what the are is what they’ll continue to be. Reckless with money? Won’t change. Love to hang with their friends? Won’t change. Roving eyes? Won’t change.
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This brings to mind the old saying A leopard can’t change it’s spots. On one hand I can understand how this would be in some situations,but on the other I don’t agree in that it is the case in all situations.

To me, if it was so in all situations, that basically says people can’t change their behaviour. And if you carry it across to sins people commit, that then implies that people cannot overcome sin and use their free will to change their behaviour. (Yes, I know we need God’s grace to do anything,especially in overcoming sin, and yes I’m aware that some habits of sin are difficult to overcome).
 
Boy marries girl hoping she won’t change - she does.

Girl marries boy hoping he will change - he doesn’t.
 
PrisonerOfChrist said:
Um hello it is! I hope you do don’t perceive the Hollywood version of marriage…
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I’ve been married 7 years and have two kids. I certainly have not experienced the “Hollywood” version, but I’d say my husband makes me happier than anything else in the world.
 
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F_Marturana said:
22 years almost for me. Marriage is hard because of outside stress and tragedy.

But at the end spouses should be each other’s best friend and care about each other.
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Yeah, my experience has been that life is hard: parenting, balancing work obligations and family, extended family members being ill, extended family members dying, etc. I have a mental illness which brings a unique set of challenges to the marriage.

In the end, though, if we’re talking strictly about the relationship between my husband and me, I have very few negative things to say. We get on each other’s nerves every once in a while, but 99% of the time we get along just fine. We laugh together, say “I love you” several times a day, take time out of the day to talk to each other… It’s only been seven years, maybe things will get really bad one day as others have described on this thread. But so far I have yet to experience the great difficulty of marriage.
 
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Irishmom2 said:
I think this is true. Sometimes husbands and wives get along just fine and the marriage is happy. But then, throw in in laws, employment stress, children and any number of other stresses. That is when marriage gets complicated. I think too many people mistake problems and stress with being unhappy in their marriage. Yes, they are unhappy, but it’s really not the spouses, it is the situation.
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Very well said, @Irishmom2.

Parenting for me is really hard. Like, really hard. My mental illness is a big contributing factor in it being especially difficult, and I’d say raising my kids has been the most challenging part of marriage so far. I also struggle with keeping up with housework, another effect of my mental illness. The house being unkempt and the stress of parenting sometimes make me depressed.
I’ve been blessed with an awesome mother-in-law. Father-in-law went home to Jesus way too soon, but he was awesome too. My relationship with other in-laws is a little rocky but definitely tolerable. However I know others are not so lucky in regard to in-laws.

But there’s very little about my actual relationship with my husband that makes me unhappy.
 
The teaching is explicit in Eastern Catholic weddings; the crowns worn by the bride and groom are the crowns of glory of martyrs, who out of love sacrifice their old life to begin a new one.
 
‘I can always tell when my mother-in-law intends to visit…the mice hurl themselves onto the traps’ (Les Dawson).
 
Not that they ‘cant’. More that they ‘won’t’…
 
Psalm30 said:
It’s only been seven years, maybe things will get really bad one day as others have described on this thread.
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Maybe things will just get better and better!
I’ve been married twenty years and we’ve had our challenges, with the biggest being ovarian cancer five years into our marriage. We got through that, so we can get through anything!
 
Exactly. Which was my point. With God’s grace they can change, but they have to will the change, and some don’t.
 
Your comment is so far off the mark that I will presume you have never practiced divorce law.

I have.

The more efficient husband abusers will strike their wives in areas in which the bruises will not show. And that only accounts for the physical violence, and ignores the emotional and psychological abuse of which men are capable; and fairly consistently, they ar;e men who sought out a pliant, non-assertive spouse whom they could control.

Spousal abuse is a sword which cuts both ways, although physical abuse is generally not within the weapons which women use. But abuse in marriages is far more prevalent than many would admit to - or even want to know about. Blaming false charges on women as if there was this vast conspiracy is pure, unadulterated poppycock. And people who go through a divorce are not generally the most reliable in truth telling as to why the divorce occurred.

Are there instances where a woman may charge the husband with spousal abuse and none had occurred? Yes; but your post reduces the tragedy of spousal abuse to a manipulative tactic, as if abuse is not occurring on a daily basis in all too many marriages. Having been “in the trenches”, I can assure you it is not a regular tactic.
 
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