Does marriage feel different?

17 comments

1. First off congrats!!! I’ve been married knocking on the door for 20 years. Feel free to ask anything. My relationship with my wife has its ups and downs and probably not as normal as others but I’m an open book

2. You both have to accept it and then go from there

3. Same here. It will start to feel different sometimes when it matters that you have committed for a life time. Other people take your connection more seriously. But mostly, it’s just like you said.

4. You’ve just sealed a contract to be with someone (that person over there) for the rest of your life.

   Of course there are going to be different feelings. Some of it is buyers remorse. Some of it is elation. There’s going to be a lot of nitpicking about what this person does because now you’re stuck with it.

   Toss all that bad stuff aside and just try to make the romantic best out of it. You’re stuck together! Celebrate it!

5. We didn’t live together before being married so for us, it was a huge change. But I imagine if you’re living together and already doing finances together it’s a lot different

6. Congratulations!

   Marriage is always seen as this monstrous adult ‘thing’. I guess our parents treated it as such. For me, it’s just being with the person you love.

   Nothing changes except there is now a piece of paper that says it’s legal for you guys to be together. That it doesn’t feel different is a good thing.

   I totally get it when you say it feels like you’re playing pretend!

7. For us, it did not feel different at all. We were committed and knew from the start we’d spend our lives together. Marriage just made it “official”.

8. If you’ve been together for years and lived together for all or most of that time, why would it?

   Almost sounds like you expected some grand transformation and are disappointed it wasn’t and don’t know why.

9. For me it didn’t feel different at first. Possibly because we’d lived together for seven years and had already merged our finances. However, when we had to make decisions as a family (having kids, who would step back from a career to care for kids, moving, etc.) being married made a huge difference.

10. Yes same! I thought I was the only crazy person thinking that!

11. Its not unusual to me when people play house for years before getting married marraige loses its purpose. Because outside of the legal benefits it didnt change anything.

    Marriage was completely different for us. We didnt live together before.

12. Welcome to the newly married club! We’ve been married for just over two weeks now. The first few days it doesn’t feel real, as your on such a big come down from everything.

    We had a conversation on Saturday and we both said that we felt more settled and calmer since we got married. (Could be newly wedded bliss that’s talking there). We’ve been living together for a couple of years and are approaching 30 is well.

13. I felt a real shift after 10 years of marriage. Prior to that it didn’t really change.

14. The only thing that was different was me trying to remember to use my new last name and figuring how to write it.

15. So you’re playin’ house? 😜

    Here’s the deal: Sometimes we think we need to morph into whatever society thinks a marriage should be. Maybe from TV or movies.

    But the reality is, you make your own rules for your marriage. You make it whatever you wish! Silly. Passionate. Supportive. Hilarious. Boring. Intellectual. Argumentative. Fast paced. Relaxed. The list goes on.

    Like a boat in the ocean, you two are driving this thing and it’ll go wherever you steer it; good or bad. And if you take your hands off the wheel, it’ll flounder by virtue of you two taking it for granted. But steer it confidently and it’ll slice through the waves of life, carrying you both through a lifetime.

16. Wait till the intimacy stops. That will make it feel different.

17. If you have been pretending to be married for years, why do you think a piece of paper would make things feel any different?