Are most marriages just meh after 10-20 years?

[Anonymous]

Married 21 years and we are very happy. All our closest friends have been married 17+ years as well, and seem to be healthy and happy relationships.

Agree with a PP - the hardest years for us were the first couple years pre kids actually just adjusting to the new marital reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends. Marriage is something both spouses need to value and work at. A friend who does marriage counseling summed it up for me---after 20 years and hitting the empty nest stage, most couples fall into three categories: (1) those who divorce; (2) those who stay married but basically live separate lives or (3) those who jointly embark on marriage 2.0---a conscious reinvigoration of marriage once you are in empty nest mode. I will observe that out of my friends (we are all 50 somethings), those who had parents who stayed married and achieved the marriage 2.0 paradigm have also managed to stay married.

Marriage therapists only see a very unusual sample: They don't see the vast majority of people who don't seek counseling.

Maybe this is different, but in general distributions tend to be normally distributed. For example, some people are introverted and others extraverted, but if you graph it, most people are in the middle, and only a few are at the extremes:



I bet marriage satisfaction is the same: Most people are somewhat happy, with lives that are neither completely intermeshed nor totally separate, with some people at the extremes - separate lives and happy, separate and unhappy, completely reinvigorated, etc.

+1 i'd rather listen to any random married grandma than a marriage therapist!

[Anonymous]

Mine was fabulous for the first 20 years, we slept together nearly every other day, laughed our asses off and had common goals, but now it’s like we talk to each other through a bad phone connection where everything is a misunderstanding or fragmented thought.
I don’t give it much more time.

[Anonymous]

Almost 17 years in.
Overall we get a b+ or a-

When it’s a terrible arguments is a d- or F.

This is silly to grade it. I don’t do this. I’m grading it in order to answer your question.

So the bad d- arguments bring the overall down, as I said, to a b+ or so.

Sex is good every time. You have to prioritize it. If you must, you should schedule it. Get a hotel. Anything to make it happen. We no longer schedule it, but it helps there’s a time of the week that we are home without kids. It’s a regular day, and so that works. Other chances happen too.

Arguments about: different choices in money/desires. But this isn’t about US. It’s the stress of other factors, and we’re just not on the same page. But it could be worse. I see worse money arguments in other couples.

Also, one difficult kid makes our marriage harder. Again, this is not about US. We have a challenge that is tough, and we take it out on the closest person (each other).

[Anonymous]

Married 10 years. Basically no sex, no romance. We have a young child. We do sometimes have conflicts regarding parenting, but overall we get along well. I'd rather live with him than anybody else I know. We like spending time together and laughing together. But I do miss the romance and the sex.

[Anonymous]

We’ve been married just over 20 years, together 25 years. Marriage got better as the kids got older. I think we really struggled when the kids were young - I wouldn’t say we were unhappy just that we weren’t focused on the marriage as much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine was fabulous for the first 20 years, we slept together nearly every other day, laughed our asses off and had common goals, but now it’s like we talk to each other through a bad phone connection where everything is a misunderstanding or fragmented thought.
I don’t give it much more time.

Your hearing is declining for sure. Don’t give up too easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Married 10 years. Basically no sex, no romance. We have a young child. We do sometimes have conflicts regarding parenting, but overall we get along well. I'd rather live with him than anybody else I know. We like spending time together and laughing together. But I do miss the romance and the sex.

It comes back!

[Anonymous]

Looking back from the 25-30 year marriage crowd here (ours and our siblings -- also parents, grandparents and all aunts and uncles all made it past 50 years 'til death did they part):

It's not always "marriage" that is the issue for people; sometimes it's that some stages of life and people in general can sometimes become meh (or worse). No phase of life is like your teens, or like your 20s, or like your 60s -- each phase is unique and you are a different person in each. And sometimes, times are hard. Sharing all of those phases with someone will naturally involve changes in the relationship too. Is your relationship with your parents the same as it was 10 years ago? Will it be the same in 20 years? Marriage is similar -- a long term relationship with another human who will change with time.

The key to appreciating your marriage long term is to expect and appreciate those changes and stay flexible knowing more change will come. It does take a level of curiosity, flexibility, resilience, and selflessness, I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine was fabulous for the first 20 years, we slept together nearly every other day, laughed our asses off and had common goals, but now it’s like we talk to each other through a bad phone connection where everything is a misunderstanding or fragmented thought.
I don’t give it much more time.

With such a strong foundation I feel you can make new connections with your partner if you want. The advice from pp just above is solid.

[Anonymous]

Yes. But people in meh marriages will say no because understandably it's triggering.

As a man I'll say for most women marriage is a disaster. The average man does have what it takes to keep a woman happy for 10+ years. To keep a woman happy for 10+ years is not trivial. The average man cannot do it because emotionally most men just don't have what it takes to keep up with the waves that emotions women go throughout their lives.

[Anonymous]

I think life is kind of meh in your 40s, so it stands to reason that marriage is kind of meh in your 40s as well.

[Anonymous]

I think “meh” would be for the average and better than the ones that are actively “ugh.” There are some that divorce but the bad ones are in between “meh” and getting divorced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're in your late 20s and most people are just in it for the kids? what?? Most of my friends hadn't even had kids until late 20s (most were 30).

Married 15 years and we're very happy. Definitely not in it for the kids. We're married despite our kids, lol. Kids are definitely the only hard part of our marriage.

You sound just like us. Our toughest years were during the infant/toddler stages. Now that they're teenagers things are much better.

[Anonymous]

24 years married and our hardest years have been the last two. My DH has ocpd and can't express emotions normally. I have emotionally checked out after doing all the emotional labor for 24 years. Divorce would be very hard. But I am sad.