Things No One Tells You about Marriage

Things No One Tells You about Marriage

For many young couples, marriage seems nothing more than a natural outcome for their relationship. But beside the legal agreement, there are other important aspects to be taken in balance. Nobody is going to come to you just before the vows and hand a list of things that will change. This is an article just to blow the dust on the many possible ways in which your life will change after the big “yes”.

Babies are definitely one step closer to you after the marriage. There is an unwritten rule that couples planning their wedding also have a baby on the short list for things to do. As the years pass there will certainly be more pressure from families and relatives. Every family reunion from then on will have a grandma begging to see a grandchild.

Traditionally, marriage means less time spent with your friends. Your gang will go on without you, but you’ll miss having someone of the same sex to speak to. A wife/husband is far from being a friend. In fact, the best way to define it is a strange hybridization between a friend, a romantic partner and an employer. Yes, a marriage resembles a job in many aspects. You’ll have chores and you’ll commit to a strict timeline of activities. Don’t be afraid, you’ll also have more fun at home and nobody is threatening to fire.

If you don’t share a long history together, you’ll experience what they call “transition from dating”. During your pre-marital period, you’ve tried to put on only your best looks and behave according to the text-books for dating. But, when it comes to marriage, you settle yourself for a date that will go on for years. There is no way you can keep your guard up for so long. Eventually, all your dark little secretes or less pleasant parts will emerge at the surface. If you haven’t experienced roommates before you are indeed entering your marriage unprepared. Expect a shocking amount of clothes on the floor, survival fights for the last piece of food in the fridge or midnight sleepwalking. And expect everything else in between.

Space will receive new dimensions for a couple getting married. It’s either moving together or spending almost all the time together. One or both of the partners will eventually develop a need for some vital space for himself/herself. The other part might interpret the desire as something selfish and dangerous for the health of the marriage, but the truth is every human being needs time spent alone in order to regroup thoughts and make better decisions. The need for a little solitude is not the end of the marriage and things should be clarified before suspicion and imagination kick in to construct a worst case scenario.

Most of us probably don’t know what a “jamais vu” experience means. In psychology, jamais vu is the phenomenon of experiencing a situation that one recognizes in some fashion, but that nonetheless seems very unfamiliar. To put it in terms of the marriage, you will wake up in the morning and ask yourself, looking at your partner sleeping: “Do I really know him/her?”. The moment will pass in a glimpse of the eye. Some say it’s a trick of the mind, a short-circuit, but for many experiencing it comes as daunting. Don’t despair. You can’t even claim to know yourself, and you had all the time in the world to do it. You can’t really expect to know someone you just met for a couple of years. Life will always learn you something extra about yourself and the ones around you. Marriage is indeed able to speed up the process.

We are all humans and we are not perfect. Everyone has his/her breaking point when it comes to anger or other harmful feelings. The most important lesson marriage will teach is to go beyond the bad moments and settle for the long term good. Marriage is like the average of a graph with ups and downs. Fights are inevitable and either you believe it or not, they will make you stronger. A marriage works the same way as an immune system and needs constant challenge in order to keep itself in the best shape and be able to respond to threats that matter.