Protect Your Marriage: Surviving the First Year of Marriage

EPISODE 3:

So you’ve had that fairytale wedding and a fabulous honeymoon, but now reality hits hard as you make that transition from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife. Can you make it work?

By: Sharlene Tan

It’s been said that the first year of marriage is the hardest to get through. In the UK, 10% of divorces occurred during the second year of marriage, according to a report from The Telegraph in late 2008. Miriam Arond, author of The First Year of Marriage: What to Expect, What to Accept, and What You Can Change, observed that marriage “changes a relationship because it brings along with it a host of conscious – and unconscious – expectations”. How can you ensure that your marriage makes it through the transitional 365 days?

Be Patient, Be Realistic

The move from an individualistic lifestyle to that of a couple can be tricky. One of the most difficult issues is getting used to your husband’s habits and lifestyle, and working them out with your way of life. It may seem insignificant but this can be quite a delicate matter – and may take a while to settle down to.

“Whose towel is placed in front to dry first… who switches off the light when both are already in bed… who squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle or the end… Old habits die hard, so I think that a suitable length of time must be allowed to lapse to give each other a chance to adjust”, advises JL Yong who has been married for three and a half years.

Molly Barrow, a counsellor and author of the book, Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships, recommends being realistic about your relationship: “It’s rocky that first year. Any fights that you’re having are probably the same ones you’ll have when you’re 75 years old, and you’re not going to solve them that first year.”

Define Roles

In a Marie Claire article, writer Lea Goldman revealed how her “even-steven partnership faltered fast” in her first year of marriage, when she and her husband faced up to the realities of life such as managing the household: “He makes the big decisions, I do the dirty work.”
Grace T, who has been married for 10 months, explains: “Sometimes, there are differences in expectations – I expect certain things to be a given but to him it’s not, so he ends up feeling like he’s putting in the effort but not being appreciated. The problem also is that sometimes we can get a bit complacent when communicating with each other because you think, oh, it’s ok, married already.”

So don’t assume that your partner is going to take on certain duties in the household, instead sit down and negotiate the roles in the relationship (eg, who does which household chores, who pays the bills etc). Dr Scott Haltzman, author of The Secrets of Happily Married Women: How to Get More Out of Your Relationship by Doing Less, recommends focusing this discussion on how each of you can help, rather than how your partner is letting you down.

Getting Along With The In-laws

Marriage brings two families together. Thus it is important to be mindful about parents from both sides. “It isn’t just two people who get married, but six — the couple and the parents of both families,” Dr Peter Chew, obstetrician and gynaecologist, and chairman of the board of aLife, a volunteer-run association which provides counselling services and marriage enrichment courses, said in a My Paper article.

Once again, don’t make assumptions. For instance, don’t presume that you’re going to be spending Christmas Eve with your family because it’s “tradition”. Talk to your husband and work out the expectations and boundaries and convey them to your respective parents way in advance. Joanne Heim, co-author of Happily Ever After: A Real-Life Look at Your First Year of Marriage, says that if you don’t set ground rules, you risk building up resentment – between the two of you and with your families. Remember that his family is trying to get used to you too!

“We just have to compromise or take turns compromising… but a huge part of it was just getting used to it,” says JL on her efforts to ensure that both she and her husband spend time with each pair of parents.

This is an instalment of our Protect Your Marriage series. If you have missed any of our previous articles, just click on the following links:
Protect Your Marriage: Date Your Spouse For Life
Protect Your Marriage: Have Sex, Have It A Lot
Protect Your Marriage: When Kids Get In The Way
Protect Your Marriage: Surviving The First Year Of Marriage
Protect Your Marriage: Surviving A “Mid-Life Crisis”
Protect Your Marriage: The China Woman Syndrome