People in successful marriages - what did you do right?
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Anonymous
Right? You said you are not looking for a gentle way to speak to your husband. You just say: Hey, cut that out. Wow! How disrespectful. Even an animal doesn't deserve to be talked to like that. |
Anonymous
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There really isn't a successful marriage, per se, unless you mean staying married. There's no secret sauce. People either stay married or not. But we know now that getting a divorce isn't necessarily a failure, and staying married isn't necessarily a success. It's an institution not a moral imperative.
If you are asking how to improve or maintain relationships, that's another whole question. |
Anonymous
No I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Happy long lasting marriage is a real thing. |
Anonymous
| Have your own interests and check your jealousy at the door. |
Anonymous
| Not having children. |
Anonymous
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Married 27 years
Mainly, we both want to remain married. My Mom would stay with the kids for a week every year when they were small so that we could vacation together. That helped a lot during those intense parenting years. +1 to PP who said low expectations. Don't try to be everything to each other. |
Anonymous
| Being okay with your decision to forgive your cheating wife. |
Anonymous
This was a good, pithy list, until you blew it, PP, with the second item on the list. Nagging is not exclusively something done by women. Either you're a woman with a low opinion of other women, or a man who believes only women are nags. Whichever is the case: Your personal experience isn't a universal truth for every woman (or man) ever. Pretty misogynistic to label nagging as an issue only for women. |
Anonymous
| When my husband and I were in our pre marriage counseling session with our parish priest he gave us a great piece of advice: When you start to argue, start taking your clothes off. If the fight is silly you will quickly forget it when you are both naked and have some fun. If the fight is important you won't care that the other person is naked. Finish that argument but remember that your marriage is worth fighting for. In 24 years we only kept fighting once. It took an hour but we worked it out. The stripping our clothes off worked. It also trained us to stop and think before we argued. By the time we had kids old enough for us not to be naked in front of them we had figured out ways to work out the small stuff. After that one big fight we realized our kitchen window was open and the new next door neighbor (a newly divorced dad) had heard everything. He brought us a bottle of wine the next day and told us how happy he was that we kept at it. He said if he and his ex had put that much effort into a fight their marriage would have lasted. Most of what makes are marriage work is that we don't sweat the small stuff, we don't keep secrets from each other and we treat all of our parents the same. His mom means just as much to me as my mom does and vice versa. That part is easy because both sets of parents treated us both like family and not in laws. I know we are lucky in that part. |
Anonymous
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Almost 30 years together, and I think it comes down to patience, work, respect, trust, courteousness, communication, chemistry And shared goals. And above all, put each other #1.
We are still best friends… have always been that way. We genuinely like hanging out together. We go on dates pretty frequently and we make time for each other. We have couple friends, I have my circle, he has his. We do a lot of things separately. But the priority is always time together. We don’t really have shared hobbies. But try to be enthusiastic of each other’s interests over the years. We’re still very respectful and courteous of each other and I think this one is really hard sometimes. We try very hard not to hurt each other’s feelings purposely which when you’re mad, can be super easy to do. But if it happens, we talk about it in a respectful manner. We try to communicate. The chemistry from day 1… hot. The sex is amazing. And frequent. During the times when we’ve felt disconnected over the years, we talk through it. Put in effort. we have always been on the same page with life goals and what our future would look like. We shared a vision. And therefore we had to share a mission — this meant sometimes making sacrifices for the other person with the big decisions that are usually tied to ego money and careers. We do these things bc of that shared vision and a singular master plan. We let a lot of the little things go. We don’t dwell. We carry a lot of the load for the other person. And we don’t call it out, or remind the other of how much work we’re doing or what we think we’re sacrificing. We do it for each other, trusting that the other will equally be doing the same. |
Anonymous
No lasting long marriage is 100% happy all the time |
Anonymous
| We have three kids. We bought a house on one income. More kids and less debt is a surprisingly successful combination. |
Anonymous
Agreement on money makes marriage so much easier. Spouse and I have always shared one bank account never once questioned the other about any spending decision. We have been respectful of the family's finances since our wedding day, and it has worked. Don't waste money on stupid stuff. Retail therapy is as bad as an unnecessary sports car. |
Anonymous
| Married someone who was nice to everyone not just me, and vice versa |
Anonymous
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Married 18 years.
1) Married a good, decent human being. Someone with a sense of morals, doing the right thing even if it's not the easiest. It is not true that nice guys finish last. You want the nice guy. 2) Had realistic expectations of a long marriage. There will be times that are hard, boring, frustrating, etc., but if both people are in the marriage for the long haul, you're more likely to survive the seasons. 3) Luck. Knock on wood - a lot of things can derail a marriage beyond one's control like serious health issues, death, unemployment, etc. |