We’ve been counseling married couples and navigating the twists and turns of our own marriage for three decades, so we know better than to expect perfection. Anyone who claims to have a perfect marriage is either clueless or overly attached to the myths that we deflate in this chapter — myths that would have you believe that happy couples should do everything together or that they never argue.
Whether you’ve been married for decades or are considering tying the knot, we help you take an honest look at your relationship and start pinpointing areas that can use improvement. A successful marriage isn’t rocket science. Mostly, it’s a matter of commitment to each other, love, mutual respect, and trying to have fun as you work at making it better.
To Marry or Not to Marry?
Many people consider living together to be just like marriage, except without the certificate. In fact, marriage differs from all other forms of pairing (including living together) in one very important way which has nothing to do with a piece of paper.
Living together means that you are free to leave at any time, without going through the hassle and expense of a divorce. Marriage entails a commitment to your partner, a promise that says that you won’t just get up and walk out at a moment’s notice. When all is said and done, that legal, social, and emotional commitment is the most important difference between marriage and living together. Which, by the way, is the whole point of dragging your families and the rest of the community into the process: To declare to the world that you are making a lifetime pledge to another human being.
After living together for a time, many couples find it difficult to agree on the importance of marriage. Very often, the lack of agreement stems from one or both individuals not wanting to make the commitment that marriage entails.
If you and your partner are debating whether to get married, following these steps may help you come to a decision:
1. Sit down and have an honest discussion about the way each of you feels about the advantages and disadvantages of marriage.
The next section in this chapter, “Understanding Marriage Pluses and Minuses,” can prepare you for this discussion.
Couples marrying for the first time need to recognize that cohabitation doesn’t provide the same dedication to each other as does marriage. Researchers have found that married couples who lived together before marriage are twice as likely to divorce as other couples. One explanation for this may be that living together fosters an atmosphere of noncommitment. Couples considering marriage need to recognize that marriage involves the loss of certain freedoms, and that this is part of the tradeoff when you commit to a lifelong bond.
When people marry for the first time, they cast their lots together for the common good. Even when one spouse has more money than the other, there is a feeling that separate bank accounts or prenuptial agreements may undermine the relationship. The situation is often different for older or previously married couples. People in this position may want companionship, but they find it advantageous to keep finances separate. This makes sense when one or both partners have children and property from an earlier marriage, and don’t want to risk jeopardizing them.
If, after an honest, ongoing discussion, one of you has serious doubts about making a commitment and the other is set on marriage, the two of you have to decide whether you can bridge this difference in the foreseeable future.
2. Set a timeframe for working out your differences regarding marriage.
You can agree to suspend making a decision for a set period of time — say six months or a year. If, at that point, you both still can’t decide between living together and marriage, you may want to consider whether your long-term goals will ever be compatible.
If you want a committed lifetime relationship, living together is no substitute for marriage. Sharing an apartment, having sex, and keeping your options open may be fine for a while, but ultimately, most people want to take that next step, into marriage, at least once.
