Reply to Do all marriages kind of suck?

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Reply to "Do all marriages kind of suck?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We have 3 kids. We love our kids and our family. We make a good team. We aren’t really romantic, more like plutonic friends co-parenting. We have sex maybe once a month. I don’t enjoy it. We are both still fit and attractive. I don’t feel in love. Both staying for the kids.

Is this fairly common?

I feel like most couples are unhappily married. Many couples we know are in trouble or divorcing. A few were separated but trying to work it out for the kids. Some have jobs they hate. Others struggle financially. Some husbands obviously don’t seem into wife. No one seems truly happy. The few that care most about appearances have the worst problems- affairs or mental illness.[/quote]

I think marriage, like many things in life, is just disappointing. We're made to believe that it's this wonderfully meaningful, magical thing, and we should all aspire to it. The over-the-top proposals, the receptions with flash mobs and serenading grooms, the honeymoon in the Maldives. It's just all SO GREAT. Yay! We're married!

And then it's just work. Go to work, come home to more work. Having kids? WORK. Housework. Homework. And to make matters worse, rather than provide a refuge from all the nonsense, the storm of everyday life, the marriage [i]itself[/i] becomes work. But the thing is, [i]that's really all it is meant to be.[/i] The problem is expecting it to be anything else.

I'll take cue from a PP who said it's a choice. While I do think that's an oversimplification, I do believe in having realistic expectations that are rooted in reality. Not that OP is unrealistic or living in a dream world. But I think it's important to realize that the best you'll probably ever do is "fine." And that's where you are now. Fine. You have a partner, and together your job is to get it done, and get through it. Like countless others, you're unhappy because you had certain expectations of how it would be. But stripping away those expectations, everything is ... fine. Love fades, the kids grow up and leave. You've devoted your best years to building and maintaining a high-functioning machine, and are now ready to face the final stretch with your associate.

Welcome to the rest of your life.

TLDR;

Marriage is a bait and switch. 
There is no happy or unhappy. There is only fine.[/quote]

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