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I sometimes think about how other people have less happy relationships than mine, and that makes me sad for them
We're about to celebrate our 17th anniversary and we've been together over 20. I am more in love today than I was when we first started dating. She's the most wonderful person I know and I love sharing my life with her.
Got a partner who pays half the bills, does half the laundry, cooks half the food, washes half the dishes. Even without sex, it's an absolute win.
But you consume twice as much food, have twice as much laundry, and so on.
Yeah but then zero of many things.
I may do double dishes. But zero baking and I'm rewarded with cookies randomly.
I may do double cleaning. But zero when it comes to buying gifts and cards for people, because she loves doing that. And I get to reap all the benefits.
Absolutely this. I suck at cooking but my wife is great at it. She hates doing dishes but I really donβt mind.
Economies of scale
That's because I'm getting fat because I only have to do half the work I did before.
I can't imagine living with one person who likes me, let alone 2 (or more I guess, though poly isn't my cup of tea)
I know, right!?
I'm pretty introverted, and one thing I found surprising is that time with my wife counts as "alone time" for that =)
Same!
One of my fears dating was that id run out of social energy and she'd realize i was really boring. A few years in our relationship, I told her. And she said she thought SHE was boring me, because she never had anything to really say.
Now it's been more than a decade and there's no social battery being drained with her, and vice versa. We charge each other up!
She charges your battery - that's so sweet. π
you don't need to get married for that
Exactly, I had a cat for years before getting married
heheh
Or just live together without getting your official government approval certificate
In the US at least:
What if they get seriously injured? How will you have rights about their care? To go and see them? What if you have great insurance, but they don't?
Marriage has tons of benefits over being unmarried, right or wrong. Plus, I enjoyed getting married. I also enjoy being married. Life is hard. My wife always has my back.
Why can't you get similar right via other certificates?
Ask the legislature. Some of those you can get other ways, but not all of them. Getting married does them all.
More recent generations have much better emotional intelligence than previous ones. We're consistently getting better at things like communication and being aware of our own feelings, which makes marriage a lot better.
I always heard growing up that once you stop fighting, the marriage is in trouble. Which, frankly, is bullshit. The marriage is in trouble when you stop communicating, but that doesn't mean you have to constantly fight. It's possible to work out differences before they build up and explode.
It's still difficult at times, but yeah, marriage is rad if you both commit to being great communicators.
Probably because bc let's you marry who you want instead of an obligation due to being too aroused one time.
I remember hearing all the boomer "take my wife...please! Ole ball and chain" jokes growing up. I fuckin love my husband. I love being married. I feel bad for people who think resenting their spouse is the default. I get to touch butt pretty much whenever I want.
Could have done this much cheaper with a dog.
Dogs rarely have jobs with an income or are able to make you tea when sick.
You can't fuck a dog though
The sublime difference between "can't" and "shouldn't".
You clearly aren't a white girl
Not with that attitude
My partner and I both say that weβre better than being alone. And we both LOVE being alone.
I love being alone together with my wife
I told some of my single friends I needed some alone time, and my wife joined me. And they said, "I thought you needed alone time".
And I didn't know how to explain that to them.
My partner will sit and read quietly in the room while I'm playing games and not interact with each other and it's the fucking best.
Same but with check-ins every 15-30 minutes. Usually a "whatcha doin" or a surprise hug or kiss.
I cracked the code. I married my best friend. Now I get to hang out with my best friend every single day!
I also had a rule that I would live with them for at least 1 year before committing to a proposal. I had to know in advance that I could live with this person, at their best AND worst every single day, before I would even consider marriage.
So many marriages fell apart during the pandemic because so many people had to be trapped in their house with their spouse all day and quickly learned that they didn't really like spending time with them. But not me and my spouse; it was the normal routine for us, but more of it!
Personally, we like to spend time near each other, but not necessarily doing the exact same things together. It's important to have different hobbies that the other can respect, but not necessarily be all-in with you. Because doing the same things with a partner every day can get exhausting.
For instance, my wife spends 90% of her awake time playing mobile games on her phone. I love to spend time indulging in hobbies online. We'll both sit in the same room together all day, but be engaged in our own things.
When we want to do something together, we'll both agree to switch to that. For example, we both love watching movies and binging TV shows. So when one of us moves to the couch, that's usually a sign that they're up for watching something and we'll both decide on what to watch together.
It also helps to not be solely interested in someone for their looks. Looks fade, and unless you find a personality under those looks that meshes well with yours, you'll eventually find yourself frustrated and trapped with someone you don't get along with. Looks are a bonus; no relationship should be focused solely on that, unless you mutually agree in advance that the relationship is meant to be a fling based on looks and passionate desire. Which can be beautiful in its own way, but may not lead to marriage.
1 year is a bit too little. A lot of couples break up at year 3-5. I've been together with my gf for 5 years and am only now certain it is time to get married. We haven't had a single real fight in those 5 years. I have learned that if your relationship takes serious work and you have fights, its not worth it and it will fail.
I have learned that if your relationship takes serious work and you have fights, its not worth it and it will fail.
I actually learned the opposite in my experiences. When I tried to avoid fights and keep the peace, my relationships always failed. But when I stopped being a "yes man" and spoke up about important subjects of conflict, it gave us time to discuss, and I found my bond with my significant other to be much stronger afterward.
Yes, sometimes it would start with a fight, but we learned how to argue like mature, responsible adults and not bicker like children. It might get passionate and angry, but we always apologized for the elevated emotion when we calmed down. We always made sure to fight about the conflicting situation and not directly attack the person. Sometimes this was a learned behavior through trial and error; we'd have to apologize after the fact for getting angry at the person and not the situation. But after a while, we learned how to argue productively.
Nowadays, my spouse and I don't get into real fights anymore. We might have heated discussions, but we don't yell and scream at each other. We acknowledge good points on both sides, even if it's contradictory to our viewpoint in the discussion. We point out where feelings got hurt during the debate and we're both quick to apologize for letting emotions get away from us in the heat of the moment. Again, keeping the debate focused on the topic of disagreement and not on attacking each other has helped us to be productive in our arguments.
And because we've learned this advanced way of debating and arguing, we can speak openly with one another without fear of ruining our relationship over a disagreement. We accept that we don't have to agree on everything, and we do our best to state our case on the things we feel we need to be in agreement about.
In my experience, putting in the serious work and learning how to have healthy disagreements, even if they're not perfect every time, has only made my relationships better. If I never got into a fight with my spouse, they'd probably always get their way and walk all over me, and I'd never be happy in my relationships.
Maybe I take our personalities for granted. We do have heated arguments but we have never yelled at eachother (large distance communication excluded). We still get pissed over small things at times as we both have things that annoy us very hard but we acknowledge that these are very small issues and its nothing serious. Those cases are also very rare. One important thing is not to take your frustrations out on the person you love. I just get mad at people on the internet.
I also had a rule that I would live with them for at least 1 year before committing to a proposal. I had to know in advance that I could live with this person, at their best AND worst every single day, before I would even consider marriage.
Blows me away people get married before living with them. I never experienced that in reality, but the dating shows drive me crazy.
My wife and I moved in during the dating stages, and we drove each other crazy. After a few years, we chilled out and learned better habits from each other, then after a long time... We popped the question.