Because Love Alone Can’t Hold a Marriage Together
Hollywood and Hallmark have both done a stellar job of presenting marriage as a cinematic montage. The reality is that merging your life with that of another human being isn’t always a seamless process. It means coming to terms with your spouse’s bad habit of leaving laundry on the bathroom floor or fielding the same argument about the broken dishwasher three weeks straight. It’s a matter of trying not to roll your eyes when your partner tells you that same story again while also delighting in how their face lights up when they do. And sometimes, marriage balloons with a weighted strain that makes you question every decision you’ve ever made. Love might spark the flame, but what keeps the relationship alive are the daily decisions you make that stoke the coals.
Learn How to Fight Like Grown-Ups
The real test of a marriage’s longevity isn’t how you love; it’s how you fight. There’s a difference between being right and being kind, though that line gets blurry when you’re in crisis mode. The slammed doors, the word you didn’t mean but said anyway, reveal everything. We’ve all found ourselves constructing tiny fortresses of resentment over silly slights like dishes in the sink. The key to maintaining the peace is remembering that it’s not you versus them, but you versus the nonsense that’s come between you. When you maintain a scoreboard in your relationship, you ironically both end up losing.
Keep Doing the Simple Acts of Service
Daily acts of service amount to more than a grand gesture on special occasions. Bring them a coffee in the morning. Say thank you for unloading the dishwasher. Laugh at the meme they sent, even if it’s not funny. These gestures sound small—and they are—but they serve as daily proof to your partner that they’re still a priority. Married life is essentially a long list of tiny kindnesses undertaken gladly. And when these little acts of service are mutual, the relationship remains balanced and joyful.
Don’t Expect Mind Reading
You’d think after a decade together you’d just know them inside and out, but that assumption will only lead to resentment. We all want to be understood without having to explain, but that’s a fantasy. “You should’ve known I was upset” is the marriage equivalent of shouting into a pillow. Say what you need to say out loud, even if your voice cracks as you do so. What kills most relationships isn’t betrayal; it’s the unspoken assumption that you’ve been wronged based on a conversation that's never actually taken place.
Keep Some Mystery
Yes, you share a mortgage and maybe a Netflix password, but you’re still two separate people. Keep it that way. Go somewhere alone once in a while. The healthiest couples have whole corners of their minds devoted to their own unique interests. That’s not distance—it’s the sort of breathing space that gives you something new to talk about over dinner instead of scrolling in mutual silence.
Remember Why You Chose Each Other in the First Place
When the shine invariably wears off, revisit the memories of those earliest experiences you shared together. Reflect on the silly inside jokes that still make you burst out laughing. The details of your courtship are the scaffolding that holds everything together when the storms of life start hammering against what you’ve built together. We get so caught up in the daily stresses of life that we forget to fortify the infrastructure of our relationship. Marriage doesn’t crumble overnight; it falls to pieces slowly as we quit remembering who we were when we said yes.
