How things change when you are married

Recently I read a study that suggested the first two years of marriage set the stage for the next 13 years. The University of Texas looked at 156 couples from the time they were married to their 13 year anniversary. Researchers found:


• 68 couples were happily married
• 32 couples were unhappily married
• 56 couples had divorced

The researchers discovered "differences between the happily married and unhappily married groups were apparent right after they tied the knot." Those who divorced within the first two years showed signs of disillusionment and negative feelings within the FIRST TWO MONTHS! They also found that those who were happily married had positive feelings for their spouses for the first two years of marriage.

This study fascinated me. Within the first two months of marriage, people who had negative feelings towards each other. Ok so although the first couple years are said to be the most difficult, I think they can also be the most exciting and joyous. You are learning about each other in a completely different way. There is just so much to learn about one another and so much to express to one another. It’s amazing what you learn – from how many little hairs get stuck all around your clean sink from him shaving his face to smiling when you wake up every day when you see his face.

So it made me wonder, what could cause disillusionment within the first two months of marriage? The study found that the divorced couples avoided conflict in the first two years of marriage. When they did fight they often fought about in-laws, lack of respect, finances, commitment on time to other things, substance abuse, mental/physical abuse and unrealistic expectations. Wow, that is a long list. Anybody who is married or in a serious relationship has probably fought about many of these things.

I can’t say that C and I haven’t fought in our first three months of marriage but I can say that I am only happier that I married him every day. Before we got married we promised each other that we would never go to bed angry. It may not always be the case, but we work hard to talk things out before we go to bed. We also talk a lot about when we are feeling overwhelmed with outside stresses or even stresses between us.

Our biggest source of stress is our lack of time for each other. Since we got married, we have been busy every week/weekend doing something with friends and/or family. It seems we never have anytime to ourselves. Many weekends we have decided that we are going to take them as C&E time, but something has always come up to trump what we doing. I am definitely the type that needs to have a stress free fun day with C. Work has become increasingly stressful and when I see C, I just want it to be us. Unfortunately between his hobby of ralllying and many family functions, we really haven’t spent any time together.

I suppose my expectations were unrealistic. I thought that when we got married, we’d spend weekends going on picnics, wine tasting, walks in the park or watching movies in our pj’s all day long. I had this image of spending time together, holding hands, cuddling and only having eyes for each other. Now we tend to go places, but hang out with different people. I am lucky if we hold hands for a minute. We honestly want to say no to certain functions and spend that time together but we’ve found that people can get really mad and offended if we say no. We’ve actually been really shocked to hear about people feeling that we are not there when we feel we are overwhelmed by the amount of time we spend on others. I suppose getting married isn’t just a change for us, but a change for those closest to us. I think though, what matters most is that C and I get the time we need. We make the time for us. People who get mad, will just have to deal and understand that there are new boundaries to respect and we need to stand up for us and our relationship. I refuse to let the stresses the study found be the demise of my relationship. We love each other and that’s what’s important, more important than somebody being mad we can’t do what we used to do with them.

The newlywed stage of marriage is where you can build the foundation and set the stage for a life-long, meaningful marriage and we intend to enjoy it!