Wife and I were laughing about this last night: the thing nobody quite tells you about marriage is: you’re choosing the person in life who’s going to upset, disappoint annoy and frustrate you more than anybody else
This is true even if your spouse is the least annoying, frustrating, upsetting person you know, because of base rates. Eg say the average person has a 10% chance of annoying me, and my wife has a 1% chance. I still hang with my wife much more than 10x than the average person
Spouses get to see the worst sides of each other more than anybody else, and so it’s very easy for people to learn to think more poorly of their spouses than other people - which is sad because there’s a sort of optical illusion / selection bias at play
Marriage is the first relationship in your life that’s anything like marriage. Nothing quite prepares you for it. When you’re dating, you’re not yet *entirely* subjected to the consequences of the other person’s actions or inaction, and walking away is a cheaper option
Also this probably varies from culture to culture, but other people’s assumptions and expectations become a big deal. Families expect things of wives that they don’t expect so much of girlfriends. Women get the short end of the stick on this one
For us, humor is central to keeping things interesting, fun, compelling. You’re not going to escape pain, but if you can laugh about it together (caveat: not contemptuously at each other) then it’s still fun
The project management of a marriage, which is something I’m still not very great at + always trying to be better
