Do you enjoy being married? - Page 7

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Speaking as someone getting married in the next few months, this is a great and terrifying thread.

For those of you with happy marriages, can you offer any tips or advice?

What is a HIWS? Neither context nor Google could help me figure this out.

high income working stiff

Like Brian/Shoe/Sho'nuff I am also happily married to my wife. We've been married 8 years, and sure we went through a lot of shit, and God knows how many times we both decided to call it quits. But in my experience, after sailing through all those rough times- and slowly closing all the issues that keeps coming back every time we fought, plus finally realizing or accepting your partner for who she/he is and not who you want her/him to be then everything is a lot smoother now. Sure, we still face a lot of shit up to now but we are at a stage where I guess we've matured together and finally found ourselves to be totally comfortable with each other- faults and all. It also helps that we share the same goals in life.

I don't see why. You can be very public about your relationship and very committed without using that extraordinary social and legal contract. I've never been married but I have had two very committed relationships, I even wore a ring.

Long time no see, Fabienne, hello there!

Which Caesar? What are you talking about?

If I recall correctly, it's Suetonius who relates the very famous anecdote. Caesar was a rich spoiled brat, with a starting political carreer as anybody in his social circles would have, but nothing extraordinary. While traveling he encountered a statue of Alexander the Great and thought to himself "At my age (33) that man had already conquered the world, what have I done?". It was his epiphany.

Possibly, I have no clue, but the chance to quote the famous anecdote was too good to pass.

How committed were they if you're using the past tense to describe them?

Some people expect too much from a marriage. If you are happy in the routine of married life, wish good things for your spouse, can cheerfully make sacrifices, large and small, for her, and have a genuine respect for what she does in the world -- then I think you are having a good marriage. It's not hard to enjoy being married. It can be hard to make some of those sacrifices, but it's not hard to enjoy having made them.

Marriage can be more than this. And marriages go through phases where different things are added to this. But this is a fairer standard than what is suggested by some of the crazy & frustrating expectations, more commonly expressed as the goal or test of a marriage.

And a sure sign of a good marriage is this exchange:

Me: I'm really annoyed about the car and the $1300 we're going to have to spend on it. I know this is stupid, but I was hoping to save some money and in Nov. when WW Chan comes, have a suit made. It looks like it would cost about that much. These repairs aside it's probably too much for a suit, but still I was thinking about it.

Her: Why can't you still do that? Nothing says we can't do both.


Really the lesson is that she's making a huge sacrifice even to say that because she's very frugal. And I'm going to make a smaller sacrifice by probably not ever getting a $1300 suit because I'd rather she not fret over the money (or that she spend some of that on herself). It's silly but it's reality. Compromise and sacrifice. It does a marriage good.

b

Pretty committed. It took until I was lied and cheated on for me to break up, after years of relationship, and it cost me a lot of money. Not really dissimilar to marriage and divorce, really.

I love being married. For me, it was definitely the right choice.

I've just come through a difficult time period (lost my job in February of '08 and was out of work for 9 1/2 months). Having the support of my wife during that time period was invaluable. It was very hard, but would have been much harder without her.

Bonjour tout le monde ! I decided to show up for a little while but will try to stay away from threads on politics.

On the subject of marriage, I would say that mutual respect is essential. I hear some colleagues make unsavory comments about their husband or wife and find that particularly distateful.

Sounds like a conversation at our house. Of course, it helps that we have separate accounts.

great to see you back Fab. Bonne Annee