Take the time to know someone as a friend for a long time, date slowly and get to know them well.

I met my wife in college and we took it very slow for 8 years or so and then got married, and now we have been married about the same. We didn’t rush into marriage, kids, etc.

We also have very good communication about anything and everything, we take the time to spend together and we also have time for ourselves.

People get horny and lonely, are willing to make a lot of compromises to change that. and complacency happens over time. Throw kids in the mix, and everything gets intensified.

You know the boomer joke about spouse becoming a different person after marriage/childbirth? This is how.

Let the downvotes begin.

It doesn't usually start out that way. People get complacent and other life shit happens that they start to prioritize over their partner. Then resentment builds and everything goes to hell.

From experience: in the US especially we're sold this idea of the nuclear family: a husband, a wife, 2.5 kids and a dog with a picketed yard. It sounds nice, when that's how you've grown up and how your friends have grown up and how your parents live and how your grandparents live. We're sold this idea, this lie, so intensely because our country wants us to be in these easy to control family units designed to enforce patriarchy.

When a man is taught his job is to be a patriarchy, to be stoic, to be the protector and provider, he forgets his own needs. When aan forgets his own needs, he unwittingly lies to those close to him, those who love him. Those who think he loves them, beyond familial tie.

These are doubly so for those of us who are neurodivergent, as were taught from birth that we must suppress our own needs so those around us will tolerate us. It doesn't matter if I loved her or not, she loved me and that means I have a responsibility.

Anyway those are just my 2 cents, but what do I know, I'm just a late 20s divorced autistic trans woman, cishet relationships are an enigma to me.

So many married couples I know tend to talk as if they absolutely hate their spouse. I never understood it. If you hate them that much, then why are you married???? Very rarely do people seem to have a mutually appreciative relationship with one another. As someone who never really bothered with dating, the whole concept of people staying with someone they hate so much has forever confused me.

As a general thing not related to relationships...I've noticed that most people I interact with at work have strong tendencies to be randomly unkind for no reason. The people who I have always gravitated towards either don't seem to display random acts of unkindness or very rarely do so. I wonder if the problem is simply that most people in general are assholes??? Maybe if both of them are assholes then each one is the best they could have come up with or something??? Idk just rambling off some ideas here.

For all those young people trying to figure out of they are compatible and should get married ....

If you can both afford it ... go on an international trip together for at least two weeks.

Organizing together for something this expensive shows both how committed each other are to one another.

Spending every single day with each other figuring out how to live with each other during a complicated, sometimes difficult, but very real situations that have to be dealt with shows who each person really is and how they handle things. It gets even more revealing when you both end up in a situation where you are both tired, hungry and stressed out. Even if you are a good planner and organize every hour of a trip, not everything works out and it's those moments that show who you really are. And the longer your trip lasts, the more these events happen and the more you see the other person because you have to rely on one another in a foreign country.

I went to Thailand with my wife after we got together (we never officially married because we just didn't care about that). We didn't have much money and most expensive part of the trip was the flight to get there. We stayed in hostels, huts, bungalows and shady places and spent every day fearful, hot, confused and wondering what to do next. We did it for a month and we grew to love and trust one another through some really crazy shit. That was 26 years ago and we still talk about it.

My favorite story about this was a couple we knew years ago. They took one motorcycle and went on a four month journey around North America on their honeymoon. They went as far as Alaska, the Atlantic coast, Pacific coast, gulf of Mexico and down to Panama and back. They're still together after 60 years.

Agreed. I you are a woman why would you engage in sexual activities that you don't really enjoy? If you are a guy why would you push a person that you supposeddly love to perform sex acts that she doesn't want to do.

Add a few decades to any decision. You probably won't feel the same.

Religion.

Maybe you’re taking the joke too seriously. No one and no relationship is perfect. I can easily be both in a solid relationship with the love of my life and have some areas of frustration to vent in sexism jokes. Of course she may be frustrated enough to divorce me out of the blue, so I guess the joke is on me