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"With all this talk about &amp;quot;submitting&amp;quot; one&amp;#039;s egos in favor of their spouse&amp;#039;s opinion (this goes for women to men and men to women) I&amp;#039;d like to talk about stuff that happens once you&amp;#039;re married that you never expected. I&amp;#039;ll put myself on the firing line first by stating that I did, indeed, know that Rex was a bit rigid in some areas. He knew that I was a live wire who went from writing job to writing job. I was fully aware that we would never be the couple that financed our home to go to Europe for a year or start a new business. He went into marriage with the complete knowledge that his wife wore faux fur, cat eye glasses and owned a collection of lunch boxes that would rival a preschooler on crack. (I suppose I should have questioned his mental health, but I was too busy thrifting for vintage knee highs.) On paper, we knew each others&amp;#039; flaws. But of course we didn&amp;#039;t know that those &amp;quot;flaws&amp;quot; were really just &amp;quot;quirks&amp;quot; compared to how invested we both were in our egos... I mean... passions/opinions. How could we foresee the blowouts we would have about social events and finances? (We argued once about buying can beers vs. bottles. The six pack was cheaper, but less foo-foo for friends. You&amp;#039;ll never guess which flag in the battle each of us waved.) How could each of us be so clueless? Were we that blinded by infatuation and attraction? In some ways, yes. (I&amp;#039;m sorry. My husband is hot. I couldn&amp;#039;t help it.) But in many ways, we simply couldn&amp;#039;t see what we didn&amp;#039;t know would exist. (Yes, I meant to write that sentence that way.) Better translation: Our lives were different before we were married. We traveled a lot. We booked a lot of last minute hotels. We didn&amp;#039;t have a house mortgage or kids. We played like crazy and had a blast in our &amp;quot;acting like singles&amp;quot; world. In our love smitten delusion, we figured life would always be this magical. How would we really know that I would lose a job in Year One and we&amp;#039;d be down to one income? Some of you, like The Planner (his comment below), might argue that these are things you are supposed to talk about before you get hitched. The Planner: &amp;quot;What went wrong with your dating process? Seems to me that too many people date too short of a time and end up buying the horse instead of riding them first and seeing if the like how they ride.&amp;quot; (Andrea note: True! We dated 9 months only before getting engaged. And what about men hung like horses? Some women have a harder time bucking those stallions. Just sayin&amp;#039;.) &amp;quot;If they&amp;#039;re a slob after you marry, they were before you married.&amp;quot; (Andrea note: True! But I was too busy being a slob at work for him to see me being a slob at home.) &amp;quot;If they were a clean freak after you were married, they were before you were married.&amp;quot; (Andrea note: True! I saw Rex washing my dishes as him being sweet and considerate. The truth is he found my bacterial ridden coffee cups to be vile. He was being sweet and considerate to his lower intestines only.) &amp;quot;If he/she wasn&amp;#039;t any good in bed after you married, they weren&amp;#039;t before you married.&amp;quot; (False! Always good. Like chocolate, I can&amp;#039;t complain about that.) &amp;quot;Some people just want to be married so badly, they marry without thinking first. (That&amp;#039;s harsh, Planner.) Duh? No wonder divorce rates are so high...people don&amp;#039;t know who their marrying in the first place.&amp;quot; The Planner makes some sense. I would apply his reason to ethics, morality, religion. But other factors come into play that you aren&amp;#039;t prepared for. What then? For some people, the stress of Rex and our first few years might have sent them to divorce court. For me, though, I just knew that despite being irked about certain lifestyle changes, the basics were still there and we&amp;#039;d pull through. Would we really get divorced because life wasn&amp;#039;t as fun anymore? Were either of us that shallow? No. It took some time to see past ourselves (still does) but boy am I glad we pushed through. What are your thoughts about how things change after you marry? Could you have avoided some pitfalls? * Picture from Allposters.com. How was that poor girl to know, after the heat and excitement of this engagement, that the real reason her spouse threw off his hat was because he had very poor hair hygiene and his scalp was killing him? Big big surprise in marraige that she simply could not plan for. She just thought he had an affinity for bowler caps! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a3216/planning-for-happiness-is-th/>