(For anyone who is new, OMH= old married hags)
One of my favorite couple friends just revealed that they are splitting up after 9 months of marriage. They dated/ lived together for 8 years. I'm pretty shocked- they always seemed great together and on the same page about everything.
I always here psycologists/ therapists say (on tv, not to me personally) that the first year is the hardest. Do you agree? What was/has your experience been with the first year?
DH & I talked about this, we're at 5 months, and we both do feel a difference. Leading up to the wedding, we just figured it would feel exactly the same afterwards but we do feel some unexplainable difference. But for us, it's in a good way. We feel even closer, and so far this first year has been nothing but happiness and bliss. It makes me so sad for my friend that her experience has been the opposite.
Re: OMHs- Is the first year the toughest?
These six months have been the best yet for us. It definitely has not been hard. We love being married to each other.
That is so sad about your friend, especially since they were together for such a long time before.
This may be just me, but I think something should feel differently after the wedding.
@larrygaga those are very good points.
I didn't get in too much detail with my friend, but I think she EXPECTED change after the wedding. Because she told me that they never really managed to "merge" things. They still had separate bank accounts and considered things yours & mine. They got in a fight and he told her "get the hell out of MY house" since her name isn't on it.
I think she really just expected that to all change and merge. And that's the problem. DH & I still have all of our separate accounts, we still pay things separately, one of us owns the house, and we have not a single problem because went in expecting to keep things how they were. We didn't suddenly feel the need to get a joint account and change anything we were doing. What we do works and we like it. I get the feeling that the way they were doing it didn't work and she wanted to change it after the wedding.
Things never seem to go well if one or both of the couple expect things to change for the better after they get married.
I feel that we both went into marriage NOT expecting the other to change, and realizing that no matter how we manage our money, it's OUR money.
We were both very independent when we got married and both make enough money that we don't need to depend on the other for cash. He pays our rent, and actually just bought a house. My name is on it, but we used 100% his money. I tend to buy groceries and take care of other household expenses. We will get around to merging eventually but it hasn't been that important to us yet. Once we got married, I increased my 401K contributions to about 30% of my salary (up from only 5% before we got hitched).
Different things work for different people, we just havent decided what we want to do yet.
They did live together for about 7 of the 8 years, and even moved across the country together. They were happy in FL for a few years, and moved back home to our area a few years ago. It seemed like they had experienced a lot together and had it figured out. But I guess not??
I honestly don't think DH & I will ever combine our accounts. I'm the saver, he's the spender. I know all of his income and expenses and the percentage he gives me for bills and to invest in long term savings. I'm very particular with my money and my 7 different savings accounts (that he knows about and contributes to) and it would honestly just be a huge disaster if we had one giant account. BUT even though the accounts are in our own names and managed individually, we still consider it both of ours. If he needs $500 out of the "home improvement" account, I just give it to him. I'm not like "no, that's mine" even though I'm the one who manages it. By the way my friend explained things, it sounds like they had similar going on except her husband did say "no it's mine" and she expected that to change.
But he recently got a large bonus and we recently bought a house. He came home the other day and told me that he put $20k of the bonus straight into our mortgage. He was sort of flippant about it, I just started laughing.
I told him we really need to start having discussions about that kind of money. I'm not mad- and, hell, he spent the money responsibly! But I told him that spending money in that way should be a joint decision. I am all for paying down the mortgage early, but we have to talk about it first.