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I have always wondered. We singles are advised to break up for things like lying, cheating, disrespect if it happens only ONCE.
The reality is these things will happen as long as we are humans and in relationships. So how do you put up with the really hard stuff from your spouse and get through? Or do you?
Is forgiveness really the glue to marriage? How so?
Please give examples of things you don't like but have put up with for 5,10,20 years of marriage. Did it get easier?
Some things are forgivable - some are not. Few are not. If you married a true friend and love - you find its not a complete chore - you savor the good and find strength during the bad times. In every instance when you weigh and the balance says - "i'm good" - then you are.
I can not forgive a cheater even if married so that would be a dealbreaker for me. Other bad traits I could deal with since I'm not perfect either. But it does take time and effort to make a marriage work.
As someone else said, some things are harder to forgive.
I think the key difference is that once you're married, have kids, buy a house, save for retirement, spend 15 years together, etc, you have more at stake than when you were 19 and just dating. You have to gauge the risk and cost of working through a heavy issue like lying or infidelity against what you stand to lose if you just give up and throw the towel in. Some of those cases end up in divorce regardless, but having 3 kids, a house, a partner who has generally been good for 14 years and only screwed up in the last one, etc, is more of an incentive to try to repair the problems rather than just give up and start over.
I have always wondered. We singles are advised to break up for things like lying, cheating, disrespect if it happens only ONCE.
The reality is these things will happen as long as we are humans and in relationships. So how do you put up with the really hard stuff from your spouse and get through? Or do you?
Is forgiveness really the glue to marriage? How so?
Please give examples of things you don't like but have put up with for 5,10,20 years of marriage. Did it get easier?
I just wanted to say how awesome I think this post is. Thank you for posting it.
This is an excellent and thought-provoking question.
All marriages have ups and downs and all partners in any marriage mess up from time to time, sometimes spectacularly. Still, there is some behavior that would always be a deal breaker, at least for me. I would not tolerate my husband cheating on me, for instance. Or investing our money and losing a lot of it in some ridiculous scheme.
My husband has occasionally lied to me, but never about anything earth-shattering. I have lied to him on occasion, but about trivial things. I have occasionally taken someone else's side over his in an argument, and vice versa. But over 30+ years of togetherness, these are minor matters. When you love someone and they are the most important thing in your life, you forgive just about everything. And usually, there's nothing to forgive because in a good marriage, you're usually on the same page with most things.
You can't compare a long-term committed marriage to a dating situation. The feelings, the love, the shared experience and the history between the two married people is vast. You can't have that in a dating situation. I'm not saying two people can't be madly in love having known each other 4-5 months. But it's not the depth of feeling that longevity brings about in a viable marriage.
Marriage is not required for lifetime companionship...
As to deal breakers in marriage, yeah infidelity and irresponsible financial behavior are one-strikers. It certainly was in my failed marriage. Infidelity is usually symptomatic of a relationship that went on a nose dive long before.
As to the argument of weighing the opportunity cost of all those economic and emotional anchors one wraps around their head after decades of a marriage, that's a terrible argument. I know I was complicit in such thought process in my own failed relationship, and said attitude is a mistake. That's what I call relationship mortgaging (i.e. stay together for the kids/house/retirement/et al). A by-product of the state-delineated contract people sign without really giving it thought, and do not insulate themselves against for fear of offending the other partner's sensitivities. It's a life sentence and it doesn't have to be that way. Kids or retirements or material standards of living are not worth a disingenuous life, which is why one shouldn't mortgage their life against such whipsaw construct in the first place.
To each their own, I can't go back to that terrible place. I'm not marrying again, and if I do it's prenup city or bust baby. good luck!
Married couples put up with a lot of garbage e.g., farting, bad breath, obesity, impotence, erectile dysfunction, mood swings, etc.
So as singles, and live in`s....
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