After reading some of the more recent answers, I guess the question is asking just what works well in your marriage. I’ll answer again.
Much like @YARNLADY my husband and I do what we want separately without either of us being possessive or jealous. I go dancing with friends, luncheons, lectures, while he prefers exercising on his own, watching racing, and in the last 15 years he works many more hours than me.
When we both work full time we split chores, when I work part time or not at all, I take over the domestic chores. When I worked excessive hours we had a made come in once every two weeks (it was only for a couple months at a time, specifically during Christmas season when I worked in retail). Even when I work full time he still does the car washing (he loves cars) and helps with any yard work that needs to be done, but when I’m barely working he stops helping with the cooking and the cleaning almost entirely, although he does put his own things away. I don’t have to pick up after him so to speak. Moreover, if I don’t prepare anything for dinner he doesn’t complain about putting together something simple for himself or even having cereal for dinner, unless it’s days in a row, then he might say something, but not angrily. We only eat dinner together about half the time.
I have gone from working full time to part time to full time again, sometimes not working at all, and now I’m part time again, and every time there is a change we split the domestic work up so neither of us is working excessive hours with chores and work combined.
Above, I mentioned we do a lot of activities separately, but we do many together also. I go with him to car races (usually) he comes with me at times to listen to the live music here. Once in a while to a lecture he’s interested in. We do most local tourist attractions together. When we move to a new place we usually do a tourist attraction about once every 4–8 weeks. Some sort of sightseeing, or a museum, etc. We usually vacation together. We watch some of the same TV shows and I love that time spent with him as a regular time to relax and enjoy the same thing.
I think in marriage you have to have goals for yourself and goals for the marriage, and it’s a balancing act to get it all.
Many years ago I saw an interview regarding a longitudinal study of couples. It studied how they interacted, and which couples stayed married and which got divorced over time. The psychologists who ran the study said years later when they meet a couple now, they can predict over 90% of the time which ones will stay together. Not couples in therapy considering divorce, but even fairly new marriages they could predict with high accuracy. They said the biggest clue is if the couple regularly checks with each other what they want in life and how they can work towards it together. It can be anything from wanting a new kitchen, buying a boat, education, saving for retirement, having children, exercising, changing jobs, really almost anything.
The marriage should make life easier in a lot of ways, and it’s having a built in friendship and support hopefully. If your spouse is more work for you than if you are alone, or if your spouse is holding you back with no end in sight, why be married? Of course, there are exceptions like illness (God forbid) and special circumstances where you might go through long periods of an imbalance in the marriage, but that’s a special circumstance.
@Aster I think that’s so important. Being kind to each other. My husband when he is under stress sometimes loses that quality. Nothing extreme, but I think if he saw video of himself he would be appalled.
