Are Some Marriages Easier Than Others?

[Polly]

I'm not just talking about whether or not they look easier than other people's. I mean do you feel that there are couples who for whatever reason, have an easier time being married to each other? Is it lack of external problems? Or perhaps both are really excellent at communicating with each other?

Polly

[Maleah]

DH's grandparents had a great relationship. I don't know anyone that had witnessed a real fight and they both seemed in love and doated on each other 50 years later. He was heartbroken when she died.

[Beka]

I think some personality combinations make the stressful situations that can make or break a marriage more managable. I do agree some marriages would benefit from a change in external complications- myself and David one of the few things that causes stress in our household is the financial aspect and a big upswing in that would change alot, it would never make us happy but they fact we are very happy already and the only conflict we have is over financial stress that stress being removed would make for pretty much perfect. However I don't think it's the key to all marriages as you'd need to be happy without the money for money to make things better- it wouldn't instantly make you happy, it just may elliviate stresses in an already happy relationship.

I think people who were friends before they became partners often have an easier time because you know that person as a friend first and foremost, a spouse second and in times of stress when you don't feel the spark anymore you're still living with your bestfriend which helps. I also think the phrase of opposites attracting works well the majority of the time too as a situation in which one partner would feel overwhelmed, bored or frustrated the other partner having a different personality & strengths will flourish and work things out for the better.

[Sam]

I think great communication skills are needed and if you have that any hard times you go through will be so much easier to get through.

Marriage is too complex (well people) to answer that question because it is different for every couple. Some couples I know were just so suited and had great communication skills that they got through everything easily. I also know a very happy couple who have had very little external problems.

While I haven't been with my man for long we have had a lot of rough starts. I accidentally fell pregnant after 6 weeks of being with him, he had to get used to my three children, the kids had to bond with him, I was still getting over leaving my EX and had a lot of baggage from that. I had severe morning sickness in pregnancy that left me pretty much glued to the bed and he had to do all the housework and the hard stuff with the children.

After she was born I got bad OCD and PND that is still not totally gone, he had a big bi-polar episode so it has been a rough ride but what makes us get through this and makes us stronger is our communication skills, love for one another and our commitment. All that could have broke us as we were such a new couple but we both worked hard to overcome it by talking and by being best friends. It has brought us closer because we have over come so much in such a short time. An unwanted pregnancy threatened our relationship for a while but we made the decision to work it out because we knew we loved each other so much and we were not willing to give up easily on what we knew was a wonderful relationship. After 3 weeks I knew I met the man I want to grow old with, it was such a different feeling than I had with my EX and I knew that I loved him just as he is without wanting to change a thing about him and I will fight for us every single time something comes up.

[Sam]

I realized I ran on without really touching on the OP LOL

Sorry about that.

[off-kilter]

Yes, I think there are easier marriages than others. Some people are just ... easier? More adaptable? Low maintenance? Blessed with a higher set happiness level? Something. We all know people who are hard to be with and those that are easy to hang around, even aside from being married to them. Think about who you'd like to have to be partnered with on a project at work and who else you'd give money or even blood to not be paired with!

I think communication can be a big factor, but I think temperament, consideration, and expectations are bigger. At least, it seems that way in my anecdotal experience!

[Desirae]

I agree with what Beka and Sam have said.

[giana]

Any marriage is easier than mine I bet

[Lisa]

I do. My marriage has always been easy for me. That's not to say we don't fight but it's never ever been close to the point of even wondering why we married. Our whole relationship has been easy from the start and I feel extremely lucky about that. I know there are some people who really do have to work hard to make their marriage work.

I'm not sure why it's that way. I only know that Patrick and I are very very compatible on many levels and I think that's the key at least for us.

[Kristi]

Tim and I just talked about this the other day. We have been having a rough time of it lately and he was asking if it should be this hard. I don't really know. I think there are couples out there who just compliment each other and are able to communicate and work out their differences better than others. I think both of us think we work harder at it then we should have to. But we really love each other and want to make it work, I can tell you that I see things in the communication skills both of us have that could be improved (we hold things back until one of us just is so overloaded we can't handle it anymore.)

Tim told me he asked his sister what she does when she and her husband are arguing and she told him they never argue or have any problems. Personally I think it is BS i don't believe there are any couples out there that don't even have small arguements every once in awhile. It may not happen often but there has to be SOMETHING they argue about. Maybe I am wrong. ::shrug

I believe that part of our problem is that i got pregnant with Dylan 2 months after we started dating and that we have never really had much time where it was just us and we got the chance to really get to know each other and work through any differences that might have come up without having other things going on. But after 5 yrs we have gotten to know each other more and argue less and less. We are able to work it out more quickly now and express our feelings more openly.

[Sam]

Tim told me he asked his sister what she does when she and her husband are arguing and she told him they never argue or have any problems. Personally I think it is BS i don't believe there are any couples out there that don't even have small arguements every once in awhile. It may not happen often but there has to be SOMETHING they argue about. Maybe I am wrong. ::shrug

I think it may be because people consider arguments and disagreements differently maybe? I agree that every couple have or will have disagreements but that is different than arguing. I see arguing as shouting, throwing around horrible words, slamming doors etc etc So I can see why someone would say that they do not argue. I knew a couple that never argued and when they disagreed they talked about it after they calmed down and they never once got angry at each other.

I do not see how anyone can be married for years without having at LEAST one argument though.

Reminds me of a acquaintance I one knew who claimed he and his wife NEVER argued and never disagreed with one another, after meeting her it turns out that she didn't DARE so she kept quiet, but he thought it was a sign of a good marriage :/

[Jo]

I do know one couple that actually doesn't truly argue. It is sort of one of their relationship rules. They do get angry and do disagree but they don't have blow ups because they can't function that way. I will let the person explain it more fully if she chooses though.

For most of our marriage, it has been easy for Dave and me. But we have an advantage that many couples don't have. We were friends for 5 years before we dated, dated for 3 years before we married, have been married for nearly 8 years and have known each other for a grand total of 16 years. For us the key is communication.

We did come very very close to breaking up when Rai was at her worst though. We didn't talk about it much to anyone else at the time but it got to a point we either had to decide to make or break. We had stopped communicating and it nearly killed our marriage because of the strain of everything that was going on. Once we worked that out, we have been fine. That isn't to say we don't have disagreements and such but they aren't things we feel threaten our marriage so it isn't a big deal as long as we do communicate.

[Kristen]

I do think some marriages are easier than others, because some people are easier to get along with than others. Living with an extremely selfish person would be much harder than living with an unselfish person, for example.

Steve and I don't have a particularly hard marriage, at least comparatively speaking. Of course we have disagreements and what-not, but we have never had a real blow-up, where you yell at each other and say things you don't mean just to hurt the other person, and stomp around or throw things.
We just usually manage to deal with things in a calmer manner. This is not to say that I haven't FELT like yelling at Steve or throwing something at him...I certainly have been mad enough to do that, but by the grace of God, I haven't. I'm sure Steve has wanted to yell at me too, but when he is upset with me, he generally just speaks in an irritated tone of voice.

Although some of our disagreements have been very hard, and I've cried my way thru some of them, we've worked them all out, and none of them has actually threatened our marriage. We are both in this for the long haul.

I think one thing that helps us in our marriage is that because we are Christians, there is a standard outside of us for our behavior. If Steve is slipping into selfish behavior or is speaking unkindly or is not being considerate, I can(nicely) call him on it, because what he's doing is sinful. And he can recognize that it's not that he's failed my standards, it's that he's failed God's standards. Because God's standards for holy living are high, and because Steve understands this, and is committed to this, I don't have to worry about him stubbornly living in awful behavioral patterns. and vice versa for me.

[Lori]

I definitely think that some marriages are easier than others, just as some parent-child relationships are easier than others. If two people have temperaments that compliment each other well, I think they'll have a much easier time getting along than two people with clashing temperaments. Temperament isn't under people's control, and I do think that it's probably a pretty big factor in how hard or easy a marriage is (although not how successful it is, since people who work hard in a difficult marriage can have a more successful marriage than people who don't put any work into an easy marriage).

I think external circumstances definitely play a role. Couples who have serious financial difficulties or that are dealing with serious illnesses or that have some other extraordinary stressors going on are going to have a harder time than people who don't. I think it's just wrong to imagine that a couple who has, for example, a gravely ill child and hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills and then one parent loses their job isn't going to have a genuinely more difficult time than a couple who faces none of those problems.

And I think some people just have fewer relationship skills than others. If people have never seen good conflict resolution modelled for them by their parents, or have never learned it from somewhere else, then it's going to be a lot harder for them to resolve difficulties in their marriage than it would be for people who have learned how to resolve conflicts in healthy ways.

[Mary]

Yes, I think there are easier marriages than others. Some people are just ... easier? More adaptable? Low maintenance? Blessed with a higher set happiness level? Something. We all know people who are hard to be with and those that are easy to hang around, even aside from being married to them. Think about who you'd like to have to be partnered with on a project at work and who else you'd give money or even blood to not be paired with!

I think communication can be a big factor, but I think temperament, consideration, and expectations are bigger. At least, it seems that way in my anecdotal experience!

Big, fat DITTO to all of this!

Dh and I don't fight (I am with Sam on this one; I consider fighting to be yelling at each other, saying hurtful things, holding grudges for the rest of the day, stomping around, slamming doors, etc.) This is not something we have to work especially hard on; we just get along well and most of it is due to dh's being so easygoing. If I were married to someone who had a personality similar to mine we'd probably be going at each other numerous times a week. But between the two of us, I will get in a snit over something and dh just doesn't take the bait, which, in turn, takes the wind out of my sails and I become more reasonable after some cooling-down time. I'm not saying we've never had issues come up but they are always very contained. Something comes up, we discuss it and then that's the end of it. I know that it would be far different were I married to someone else.

[Jejune]

I think some marriages are easier than others. I think I have a really good marriage, but it's never been easy. Daniel and I both tend towards depression at times, and he has anger issues while I have fear of anger issues. We're good friends and we're good communicators, but we've had ugly (arguments? fights?) disagreements where we were just being nasty and not productive.

There are so many factors, though. Some marriages are easier because there are many parts of the relationship untouched or ignored. Some are easier because the personalities and easy going and compatible. Some are easier because the couple rarely encounters actual hardship.

I don't think easier is always better, though. I think I'm in a really good marriage most of the time, but not an easy one. I know couples in difficult and good marriages and couples in easy and bad marriages and couples in easy and good marriages and so on. I do think, though, that while marriage is easier for some people, anyone who says that marriage isn't work is either defining work differently than I am or they're lying. LOL That's one thing I do believe - that all marriage is a lot of hard work, but that hard work doesn't always mean unpleasurable work.

[Jo]

I don't think easier is always better, though. I think I'm in a really good marriage most of the time, but not an easy one. I know couples in difficult and good marriages and couples in easy and bad marriages and couples in easy and good marriages and so on. I do think, though, that while marriage is easier for some people, anyone who says that marriage isn't work is either defining work differently than I am or they're lying. LOL That's one thing I do believe - that all marriage is a lot of hard work, but that hard work doesn't always mean unpleasurable work.

I definitely agree with that. I do feel though that for some, that hard work becomes second nature so it doesn't seem difficult. Tonight I brought up an issue to Dave. It was something that bothered me and I wanted to put it on the table. But it didn't seem hard because we tend to discuss everything and anything all the time. So while we do work on our relationship, it doesn't even seem like 'unpleasurable' work. It simply doesn't seem like work at all. Once we settled the one issue, we moved on to a mundane discussion about something or other.

[Polly]

I do know one couple that actually doesn't truly argue. It is sort of one of their relationship rules. They do get angry and do disagree but they don't have blow ups because they can't function that way. I will let the person explain it more fully if she chooses though.

Thanks for the intro! LOL CJ and I certainly have disargeements. However, we do not fight. Jo is right about the fact the we established ground rules-my mom is a screamer and a below the belt fighter. She fights to win-bringing up past faults (that sometimes have nothing to do with the argument) and then after the fight, she still gives the silent treatment. I made a conscious decision to not fight like that. I can't function when I'm yelled at. So, I studied more effective means of communication. CJ, on the other hand, comes from the world's most normal family. When we moved in together in 2003, I asked him to choose if he would rather have me tell him exactly when I'm upset about something or wait till I'm really pissed. Not surprisingly, he chose A. It works. Obviously, we don't have discussions on what's upseting us in public-we take care of it as soon as we can.

Does this make our marriage easier? I don't know in comparison to other couples our age. I think our marriage is easier than marriages in my parent's generation. Apparently, not discussing stuff was much more frequent, so when people got pissed, it was like a dam breaking. My parent's marriage is a tough one. Lots of fights-and my mom just can't let stuff go, lose, or admit it when she is wrong. I had to learn it's OK to say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong," to CJ. I realized it does not make me weak or less intelligent. I also think it's important to have small disagreements and arguments in front of Elizabeth so she learns how to communicate with her friends and future partners.

Polly

[Kami]

I agree with what Beka and Sam have said.

Ditto! :)

[Marzipan]

Thanks for the intro! LOL CJ and I certainly have disargeements. However, we do not fight. Jo is right about the fact the we established ground rules-my mom is a screamer and a below the belt fighter. She fights to win-bringing up past faults (that sometimes have nothing to do with the argument) and then after the fight, she still gives the silent treatment. I made a conscious decision to not fight like that. I can't function when I'm yelled at. So, I studied more effective means of communication. CJ, on the other hand, comes from the world's most normal family. When we moved in together in 2003, I asked him to choose if he would rather have me tell him exactly when I'm upset about something or wait till I'm really pissed. Not surprisingly, he chose A. It works. Obviously, we don't have discussions on what's upseting us in public-we take care of it as soon as we can.

Does this make our marriage easier? I don't know in comparison to other couples our age. I think our marriage is easier than marriages in my parent's generation. Apparently, not discussing stuff was much more frequent, so when people got pissed, it was like a dam breaking. My parent's marriage is a tough one. Lots of fights-and my mom just can't let stuff go, lose, or admit it when she is wrong. I had to learn it's OK to say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong," to CJ. I realized it does not make me weak or less intelligent. I also think it's important to have small disagreements and arguments in front of Elizabeth so she learns how to communicate with her friends and future partners.

Polly


Our relationship sounds a lot like yours, Polly. We never fight. We disagree on things, but our lines of communication are kept wide-open and we have only lost our tempers with one another 2 or 3 times in over 8 years. JJoey and I make a concerted effort to use "I-statements." We refrain from ad hominem attacks and try to resolve disagreements via reasonable compromise. We make it a point not to let resentments or issues fester and, as such, our relationship stays smooth even through some major issues we have faced.

But as Off-Kilter pointed out, this works for us because of our temperaments. We have reasonable expectations of one another. Our relationship is egalitarian and neither of us have hot tempers. We are both happy with where our lives have gone. My husband and I were friends before we started dating and we already knew we were very compatible.

[Shana]

I am going to be a little rebellious here and say that I don't particularly think that because a marriage is EASY, that it is GOOD.

Being married to Mike was super easy. We never argued, bickered -- we just flat out barely even talked. Mike gave me a really generous allowance, we had no financial difficulties, he would barely bat an eye when I went out with friends - for the 4th time in a week.

It was EASY. But was it good? God, no. Much to my shame and chagrin, I took advantage of his easy going nature and it was a BAD marriage -- even though actually being married to him was technically not difficult.

I hope that makes sense. Hmmmm.

So anyhow fast forward to today.

Being married to Brian, I can tell by living with him for the past 2 years - is NOT going to be EASY. We both have very strong opinions, and neither of us holds on back on expressing them. Brian is VERY concerned with my whereabouts, what I am doing, who I am with, he is concerned for every single aspect of my life. It has taken some getting used to -- after being married to someone who essentially did not give a shit what I was doing.

So with me being fairly hard headed, we have had our share of disagreements but NEVER and I mean never will I allow that to degenerate into a blowout. We have stayed up until 3am at times, talking through stuff -- because neither of us will go to bed without things being resolved. And I sleep like a rock next to him, too :D

I fully expect that being married to Brian will be a lifetime of talking, talking more talking. I love the communcation! But, is it easier to just not come to him when I'm irritated with something? Sure! Will it make for a GOOD marriage? Nope.

I hope I've explained my thoughts here sorta. I don't necessarily think that easy = good. It certainly CAN, but it doesn't always.

[Christine]

Yes, some marriages are naturally easier than others. Of course, some marriages only APPEAR easier and they're actually just as complicated in private as anyone else's.

My best friend and her dh are both very easy going, soft spoken people who never raise their voices. She told me once that if they ever spoke to each other the way that Dave and I do that it would be the end of them.

Dave and I disagree, we argue, we fight but we are better than we used to be. We're one of those people - like Jejune described herself - that has a good marriage, but a not-so-easy one. We both have "issues" and have very, very similar personalities. Sometimes being married to yourself isn't a good thing. ;) But we love each other as deeply as we possibly could so no matter how bad it's gotten, it's never been bad enough, ykwim?

[Shana]

Sometimes being married to yourself isn't a good thing. ;) Yeah... that's the other thing. We are SO similar in personality, temprement -- and have always called the other My Twin. I fully agree with you.

[off-kilter]

I do agree with Jejune and Shana that easy does not mean good and that just because you have to work means your marriage is bad.

My dad is, erh, a bit of a difficult person. I love him to death, he's smart, charming, extrovertive, a bit of a clown, and a totally fascinating person. But he's not, by any stretch of the imagination, easy. I wouldn't have him any other way.

Well, maybe a little bit. When he's being particularly ornery and making me pull my hair out, but that's transitory. ;)

Tate is totally easy by comparision, but we do have issues, as do all couples and individuals. We've had times where we barely connected, and times of irritation/disagreement, and we have lots and LOTS of little irritants and small complaints. However, after my parents' tumultuous marriage and being raised by two very dramatic people, I'm glad that Tate is not nearly as high maintenance.

[TracyS]

Ours is that easy marriage in comparison to most of our friends. Not just marriage wise, but relationship wise as well. I find humour in some of them saying "I think you 2 moved too fast & got married to quick". These are the same people who are single, lonely, and bounce from relationship to relationship because they are afraid of commitment even though they want it.

Silly people.