#1
The home I grew up in led me to believe every adult comes home from work in a bad mood every day.
#2
#3
I prefer door closed bathroom visits. She will open the door and talk to me like I'm sitting on the couch while I'm deeply involved in a #2.
It's been 15 years. I lost the battle.
How long should two people be together before deciding to get married? Some couples are ready to say “I do” after just a few months, while others spend years dating before taking the next step.
Of course, there’s no universal timeline that works for everyone. Still, it’s interesting to see just how much the average length of a relationship before marriage can vary depending on where you live.
For example, according to The Knot, American couples who married in 2025 had dated for an average of three years before getting engaged. Meanwhile, a 2024 survey by British wedding planning platform Bridebook found that couples in the UK spent an average of 4.7 years together before getting engaged.
And that’s without counting the engagement itself, which can add another year or two before the wedding finally takes place.
#4
#5
Family isn't just blood.
Her mom (My MIL) loved me like a son, and when wife was out of town for a training week when I was sick, came over, cleaned house, fed me (I was so sick I was in bed for 2 days). Her brother helped too.
#6
Being divorced is so good, 10/10 recommend.
But marriage traditions look quite different in other parts of the globe. In India, for instance, arranged marriages remain common, meaning couples may have considerably less time to get acquainted beforehand.
According to data from the India Human Development Survey of 2011–2012, nearly 65% of surveyed married women had met their husbands only at or around the time of marriage. Just 11% reported having known their husbands for more than a year or since childhood.
So, does spending more time together before marriage actually increase your chances of staying happily married? There is some research suggesting that it might.
A study by economists at Emory University, involving more than 3,000 people who had been married, found that those who dated for at least three years before getting engaged were less likely to divorce than those who dated for less than a year.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that dating longer prevents divorce, as other factors could also explain why these couples were more likely to stay married.
#7
#8
When I complained to his mother she said, "he's your problem now." That comment told me everything I needed to know. I left him and we were divorced two years later.
#9
Interestingly, there’s also evidence that couples who spend very little time together before marriage can be just as happy.
A 2012 study published in Psychological Reports compared 28 people in arranged marriages with 30 in love-based marriages among Indian adults living in the United States. Researchers found no significant differences in their reported levels of marital satisfaction, love, or commitment.
Of course, the study was relatively small, but its findings suggest that the way a couple gets together doesn’t necessarily determine how happy they’ll be.
Ultimately, there’s no magic number of months or years that can tell you whether a marriage will succeed. Spending more time together can give couples a chance to understand each other’s habits and see how they handle difficult situations, but even decades of dating wouldn’t reveal absolutely everything about another person.
After all, we’re constantly learning and changing throughout our lives. Perhaps that’s part of what makes marriage so interesting: even after the wedding, there’s still plenty left to discover about the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with.
#10
#11
After the wedding we went to the bank to refinance my house (I had to pay my ex his equity on the house) and found out that my new husband did not own a cabin, it was his aunts that he had been living in. He has 9k in credit card debt. His credit was in the 600’s so we couldn’t get a good rate on the mortgage, he owed more than his camper was worth, so he would never pay me the half he said he would go split the new one, and his car payment was almost $800 per month.
He said he didn’t tell me because he was embarrassed to be 48 years old and have nothing but debt and zero assets. I also found out he had stolen all of his moms pain meds for her back.
This was one of the most frightening times of my life.
#12
I hit the jackpot.
#13
Edit: Having a good laugh at people saying we should've lived together before we got married. This was based on personal faith-based beliefs that we feel strongly about. I married my best friend and we have made it through some of the best and worst of times in over two years of dating. We may not have done things how you would, but this was absolutely the best decision for us.
#14
All the time we were together before, I probably would have said I would have liked a little more traditional romance, but I appreciated how straightforward and pragmatic he was about other things and thought I can't have it both ways. I could add that he is a theoretical physicist who works with engineers, and he has the personality to match. He always said he thought marriage was essentially meaningless. Eventually, for external reasons, we decided to do it (I proposed to him, by the way, with a new watch). We threw together a cheap little ceremony in a few weeks to "get it over with" as we both put it.
He put on his suit, I put on my pretty dress, we had the officiant there (that I found on Yelp two weeks before) and got started. However, when it came time for the vows and the ring exchange, I suddenly found myself facing a very sentimental man, who was clearly deeply in love with me and overjoyed to be marrying me. After that, the same man who took years to feel comfortable holding my hand in public for even five minutes was hugging and kissing me in front of everyone at every moment he could during the ceremony. Then he wanted to celebrate every "week-iversary" then every "month-iversary" with romantic dinners and having the same cake we had at our wedding. He starts celebrating at 12:01 AM on our anniversaries. He gazes lovingly at his wedding ring and always wants me to do the Wonder Twins thing with him by clicking our rings together. Who'd a thunk it?
#15
While we were dating I complained for about a month about how he'd finish his cereal and leave a bowl almost half way full of milk and sugar in the sink; it's extremely wasteful and we were going through A LOT of milk and sugar just to have it be poured down the drain. After marriage he started pouring his cereal first, then sugar, then milk and when he's done his bowl is usually empty or almost empty.
He stopped throwing his clothes everywhere. He started leaving his projects more contained rather than all over the place. He stopped smoking in the house and leaving his ash trays on the floor; this one I think mainly changed because I had to have surgery and when I came out I would literally throw up at the smell of cigarettes.
There's other things I can't think of right now that I brought up for probably the first year we lived together; we'll be celebrating 14 years next month, but it shocked me that he changed those things after marriage because I married him expecting that to just be my life with him and although those were annoying things he did, they were far from deal breakers.
#17
In many ways, I made sure that getting married was a good next step in our relationship. He's my favorite person in the world, I love being in our love every day (even when he pisses me off).
#18
