With you. I have been married 15 years and it is better than ever. There were years I didn’t feel that way - there were times outside tragedies stuck and our dealing with that put a huge strain on our relationship, but we are better for it now.

Agreed- I think the first year of living together was the “foundation” of a lot of stuff in our lives.

I think “the first year is the hardest” is mostly the “not living together before marriage” thing, but also possibly not knowing each other super well before that living together, and not having a slew of former roommates that did some of the hard work in making you livable and understanding of others’ quirks.

But that isn’t something that necessarily occurs in marriage. It’s just part of most people’s normal progression in a long term relationship (and certainly in some marriages, there’s an expectation that you remain the same standards in marriage that you did when dating, including women waking up earlier than their…

Yeah, we’ve been together and lived together and gone through too much stuff to not have already gone through a lot of goal setting and working towards them. We’ve accomplished some goals, adjusted others, and scrapped some while making new ones :)

My husband and I only lived together for about a year and a half before we got married, so I’m not sure that this would apply to your situation (and I hope the laws change in your country to allow you to marry!), but the one thing that really changed is that we’re much closer now than we were when we got married. It…

Me too, girl. (I don’t actually know if you’re female, but I stand by the phrasing!) My 1st anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks, and I’ve been thinking that same thing. Being married rules. Having a constant partner has made every part of my life better, and I’m so flipping excited that we get to hang out for…

I hope you don’t mind me asking... My partner and I have been dating/engaged for a bit over 10 years. We aren’t married, because the law here prevents us from doing so, but we’ve always wondered about the same thing - people always say that married life is different/harder, and we cannot think why. Surely if you’ve…

Not alone! My first year was amazing. About to have our 15th. Sorrow and joy. But we continue to evolve separately and together. I look back on all those years, through existential and real crises (24 then, 39 now), and it truly is better and deeper and more delicious. The desert, when it comes, makes the ocean all…

My mother-in-law was always going on about this with my husband’s sister about how hard the first year of marriage is. It wasn’t for me and it was super weird to have these conversations with them - they acted like somehow I was the weird one for not finding my marriage so hard in the first year.

As someone who has been partnered for almost 9 years but not married, I really struggle to understand why the marriage milestone is remotely relevant. How would the first year or marriage be more impactful than the first year of living together? Or the first year or merged finances? Or the first year of being parents?…

I’m coming up on my 5th anniversary. I didn’t think the first year was as bad as everybody made it out to be, but I do think it’s gotten better since then. Surviving more shit together and coming out ok will do that :)

I think this hits the nail on the head - it’s not the year that matters but the amount of shit that you have to wade through and whether or not you can deal with it together. Sometimes that’s year one, and sometimes it’s year twenty.

First year was definitely not hardest. The hardest years of my marriage were 6-8 and that was because of recurrent pregnancy loss and the mental issues that we had to deal with surrounding that. Fortunately year 10 has been nothing short of amazing.

I also don’t get why the first year would inherently be so hard. But…

I think it’s the living together thing. You know, the super sinful act of understanding each others’ weirdo private habits before you decide to commit being with them until death.

The first year or so of our marriage wasn’t great, and I do think a part of that was that we hadn’t properly lived together before. But we had other stuff going on to- I was very isolated that first year because I was unemployed and couldn’t drive. He was very worried about money. I think maybe the biggest problem was…

It’s different for every couple. Every couple will have their own situation and challenges and personalities so it makes sense that it would be different levels of hard for different couples.

The 7th or 8th year is the hardest, not the 1st. Sorry.

I think “first year is the hardest” is really just about how the first year has its difficulties that you can’t really prevent and it is your first time dealing with difficulties in the context of marriage. There are more difficult issues that will come but you at least will have some experience dealing with issues in…

I’m coming up on my 1st wedding anniversary, and while there have been struggles, this has hands down been the best year of my life. I keep wondering if that conventional wisdom that the 1st year is the hardest is just total bullshit, or if I got super lucky. Or, was it only the hardest because in the past couples…