After the fairy tale wedding….

Living happily thereafter is a phrase that all married couples will admit doesn’t happen so easily.  You get married to this person you are crazily in love with thinking that you will have this fairy tale happy life with them but this doesn’t often last long. Three months down the line reality strikes and you realize that all that glittered is not gold. You start to notice some habits in your spouse that are hard to tolerate. The good things start to reduce and life starts getting boring before you even settle down. Welcome to the drama of a new marriage.

The most natural thing to do is to get frustrated, fight with your spouse and start withdrawing. However this just makes the situation worse.

Avoid getting used to each other

The reality is that in some instances your partner hasn’t changed, it is the scenario that has changed. When you are living separately, a phone call in the morning, another at noon and another in the afternoon are obvious.  However when you live together it is likely the calls will reduce since you are together in the morning and in the evening. If the man is not keen enough he will forget to even catch up with you during the day since he will meet you in the evening.

Another scenario is that some of the things he/she used to do for you when dating that looked like a favor now become normal and you no longer notice them.  If for example he used to cook for you when you visit him, it was something to brag about to your pals. However when you get married it is expected that he will assist and it stops being such a big thing. These two scenarios often lead to frustrations.

Sometimes it is not that happily thereafter isn’t happening, but we become used to each other and either forget to do the nice things we used to for them or we forget to appreciate the nice things they do for us because they have become a norm.

Couples therefore need to continually talk to each other and audit their life and see where to improve.

Your partner isn’t perfect

During dating we are usually consumed with the adrenalin rush and all we see is the perfect partner. Even in instances where some negative truth rears its head we convince ourselves that he/she will change. However when we get married reality strikes. With no need to impress partners become their real selves and the weaknesses start to manifest. Many couples go through this shock in the first years of marriage as they try to reconcile the person they knew before marriage and the person they now see.

The happily thereafter at this stage sounds like a fairy tale. However it doesn’t have to be that way. If only we appreciated that no one is perfect then we could live better with each other.

The way to defeat the frustration is by focusing on the other many good things that attracted him/her to you in the first place. Secondly talk about your disappointments and see what the two of you can do to deal with it. Sometimes you might need to lower your expectations. Other times the other partner needs to be sensitive enough to make some changes. At the end of the day the happily thereafter doesn’t just happen, we make it happen by adopting to the new realities of marriage