What did you think marriage would be like and is it what you expected?

Being married is the best thing that ever happened to me.
My parents marriage fell apart after 13years,they were not a good fit,Mom left Dad for a complete loser .
Dad got a great lady but we lost her to cancer ,but he remarried and has been with his new wife for 15plus years now.
Mrs Squeeky and I are heading for 32years this coming summer.
It has been alot of give and take but wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Being single was best for me but I didn’t realize it until I turned 45.

Second marriage worked a lot better! 32 years later !

Marriage is a fine institution. But institutions are for crazy people. As my old pappy always said.

We’ve been married for 24-years (after dating for 9-years).

From my parents, I learned that one person could be emotionally unpredictable and regularly volatile while the other person desperately holds it all together while never standing up for themselves.

I never had any expectations of marriage or really expected to. While dating, we always approached it as ‘one day at a time’. It wasn’t until 7-years into dating that we started considering it.

Subconsciously though, in retrospect, I can see that I definitely chose someone who was the polar opposite of my mother (stable, compassionate, caring, selfless) and I really made a concerted effort to create my own life and be fully independent. I want to be with my wife, I don’t need to be.

One thing I did fail at initially was giving too much of myself all the time. To the point of exhaustion sometimes. Really was not great at saying ‘no’ and not feeling guilty. This, I did pick up from my dad.

Two-plus decades later I’m much better at that part. It’s been a long road in that though as I did create my own monster, as it were. Odd as it sounds, I had to learn to simply care less. It was definitely a combination of wanting to be seen as valuable and needing to be in control of too many things.

Outside of that though, our marriage has been fabulous. I love being married to my best friend. Nobody else I’d rather hang out with. We’ve been on a lot of adventures. Traveled a lot. Spent way too many hours in hospitals and caring for family members. Probably far too generous in letting people live with us, hosting every holiday. Not fabulous at finance, but we own a house and work stupid hard. Raised an amazing kid after adopting her at age one.

Now we’re just trying to stay the course for four-ish more years. Get the kid through college as debt-free as possible and into her own life.

Given that I’m 49, I figure that gives us another 20+ years (assuming all goes well and the creeks don’t rise) to have a third act (as it were). My hope is that we can get to some version of financial stability, spend more time alone, travel some, and maybe become pretty good grandparents.

I’ve been married for 29 years. It’s been far greater way of life than I imagined.

My Father died when I was 4 and my Mother married 4 times to alcoholic men. My childhood was miserable. Such a long sad story that is.

I have never touched alcohol and I cherish my wife. I alway treat her kindly and have never raised my voice to her. We have mutual respect and complete trust.

I guess I never really had much expectations for marriage except I expect them to be faithful.