Do you love your spouse more or less....

Into+the+Kitty

Since getting married?

Into+the+Kitty

Follow up question: Would you do it all again, knowing everything you know now?

stoneycakes

Into+the+Kitty said:

Follow up question: Would you do it all again, knowing everything you know now?

KLXVI

I guess I should be a SS, but I voted "the same".  We dated for 8.5 years before getting married so I knew what I was getting into  

Now, if the question was loving him differently after having a child, that might change my answer. 

Mandmeesh

Also agree with @stoneycakes‌ ' gif.

JEPES1348

SS- I want to say I love him more, because he's a wonderful father, a sweet person, blah blah blah. But now that we've settled in to our life together, there are things about him that drive me absolutely batty, whereas when we were dating I was all starry-eyed and could overlook certain annoying things. So....the same?  God, he'd be crushed...

Into+the+Kitty

KLXVI said:

I guess I should be a SS, but I voted "the same".  We dated for 8.5 years before getting married so I knew what I was getting into  

Now, if the question was loving him differently after having a child, that might change my answer. 

Did you get married after having a child? I'm asking since your wedding day, how would you quantify your love?

TJ1979

I'm with @stoneycakes on this one too. 

Into+the+Kitty

To answer my own question: Knowing all I know, I would totally marry him again, but I would never have tried nearly as hard to be accepted by his family. And I wouldn't have put up with nearly as much shit about that when we were dating.

CLLDLL

SecretAgentKate said:

I love him more now. And i would absolutely do it again. If you had asked this back around year two or three though, my answer would have been totally different. I thought about how much I wanted a divorce every single day back then. We had a really rough time where, looking back, it was just selfishness on both of our parts. We worked really hard to overcome that though, and both had to make a lot of apologies for things. But eventually we healed and came out much stronger.

Our story is sort of similar.  We've had ebbs and flows in our marriage.  Overall I love (and trust) him more.  I know that no matter what happens he has my back, even if he's mad at me or whatever.  

There certainly are things he does that drive me crazy and days I wish I could be on my own, but overall I'm happy with my life and I can't (and don't want to) imagine a life without him. 

Would I do it all over again....yes.  But I would do some things a bit differently as far as how we interact with each other and managing our expectations of each other early on.

TJ1979

So I wonder how this differs depending on how long you have been married?

Into+the+Kitty

^^ IRTT: I confess that I find myself totally judging people's signatures when they include a timelines between dating/marriage/children, especially if they include how old they are and they are young.

Into+the+Kitty

It was to stringy and TJ, not you. But in regards to this.

ElleBeeDub

I love him more now.

We dated long distance for a year and a half before getting engaged, so we were engaged before we'd even lived in the same city together. We were young (22) and stupid, and honestly we shouldn't have gotten married. That being said, we DID get married, and that commitment means a lot to both of us. We've been married 6.5 years, and we've put A LOT of work into our relationship. It's definitely not a butterflies and rainbows marriage, but he's my partner and that's that. 

I'm with stringy, though, I do sometimes wish the physical part was more like when we were dating... Not seeing each other in person for months at a time can really make for some good reunion make-out sessions

CLLDLL

For the record, we dated a whole 4 months before getting married.  We were 25 and 33 at the time.  We've been married almost 10 years now.  

JEPES1348

Fortunately, we've been together for 9 years, and the physical/intimate aspect is just as strong, if not more so, actually. So apparently is when we're not in bed that some of his habits make my eye twitch. But no one is perfect, and I feel pretty darn lucky with my chosen mate. And I'm with mrscjmb9410: things would have to get pretty awful before we decided to use the D word. Having our child/children have both parents in their everyday lives is the most important thing to us, so long as we weren't making our children miserable by being miserable to each other.

JEPES1348

Cold-hearted snake. 

unaveragejane

DH and I have been together for 13 years. We got married 9 years ago. I'll be 33 this year, and he'll be 37. We waited 7 years to have kids, and quite honestly trying to make that decision was probably the closest we ever came to splitting up. (I didn't think I would want kids when we got married, but over time that changed. I wasn't willing to force him into it, but I also wasn't sure if I was willing to give up motherhood completely. He had to think about it for two years before he was ready to even NTNP. It was terrible.) Anyway, he absolutely loves being a dad and I love that DS thinks he hung the moon. I'd still like to wring DH's neck from time to time b/c he hasn't outgrown his selfish side much, but I'd definitely marry him again.

Into+the+Kitty

stringy813 said:

This thread was really created to fill in the spreadsheet....


I'm 33, wifey is 35. We've been together 8 years, married legally for almost 3. (we were never illegally married, but its a key distinction). Lived together for...almost 6 now...or 7. What year is it?

Wouldn't change a thing except for the situation around us first getting together, that was a little sketchy, and I'll leave it to your imaginations.

I had a sketchy bit when I met my husband.

Fun fact: We slept together the first day we met, and didn't have our first kiss until date #3.

stoneycakes

Into+the+Kitty said:

stringy813 said:

This thread was really created to fill in the spreadsheet....


I'm 33, wifey is 35. We've been together 8 years, married legally for almost 3. (we were never illegally married, but its a key distinction). Lived together for...almost 6 now...or 7. What year is it?

Wouldn't change a thing except for the situation around us first getting together, that was a little sketchy, and I'll leave it to your imaginations.

I had a sketchy bit when I met my husband.

Fun fact: We slept together the first day we met, and didn't have our first kiss until date #3.

Hmmm...was this sketchy situation a bit like Pretty Woman?

JEPES1348

Totally what I was going to say, Stoney!

haileyq

Interesting question...
I'm in the boat of "we had a kid right after we got married" so I do think that the parenthood part of the equation is the kicker here. We dated for 4 years before we married then had our son 5 months after we were married. I would say that I love him "more" than when we dated but I think that having a child together is what changed it.

Would I do it all again? For sure. I've never been as happy as I am now; I never imagined life could even BE this happy. I didn't want kids when DH and I met, I definitely didn't want to be married. I honestly thought I'd be a travel nurse living in a Winnebago with my dog having flings here and there but never fully committing to anything. Now the tags "wife" and "mother" don't have the negative connotations in my head that they used to, I actually love them!

If it matters I'm 28 and DH is almost 30.

SkyBee

Into+the+Kitty said:

To answer my own question: Knowing all I know, I would totally marry him again, but I would never have tried nearly as hard to be accepted by his family. And I wouldn't have put up with nearly as much shit about that when we were dating.

This is me exactly.... DH's family is crazy and I only regret putting up with it for so long.

TJ1979

We have been married 5 years, together 7, and he was married when we met.  Muah-ha-ha, there's SO MUCH home-wrecking on the CD board! 


(They were separated, nothing really untoward going on, but it sounds dramatical.)

JEPES1348

Who's the ghost "love it" on TJ's last post?

JEPES1348

Oh, it's Meesh, though her avatar seems to have disappeared.

Mandmeesh

We've been dating for...13 years. Lived together for 6 years before marrying. Had M 3 years after marriage.

We started dating when I was fourteen. I can't imagine life with anyone else. I don't even know how to date. Gross

JEPES1348

We met Junior year in college and have been together since. Dating since '05, married since '11. LO welcomed in '13. Now for LO #2.... :x

RachelCA29

I voted more. I think because the more experiences you share together the closer you can get, as long as those experiences are positive/supportive.

We've been together for 10 years, married for 4.5 years and we've been through a lot of  the ups and downs of life in that time. And we support each other through those ups and downs and it makes us closer, so the love grows.

There are times my husband drives me insane, but it's always the little things (like loading the dishwasher) that are really insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And those little things do fall away when the big shit happens and the support we have in each other makes me/us realize how well matched and supported we are together.

km_md

We lived together for a couple of years before getting married so I knew about most of his annoying habits. Since getting married we've gone through some hardships and they have absolutely brought us closer together and reminded me why I love him so much.

His family has caused more fights during our relationship than anything else.

Rrrrrachel

Definitely more, but not because we're married. Just the longer we're together the more and more meaningful the love grows, especially after having kids. Even though I often can't stand the way he parents our toddler

gallifreygirl

We've been together since I was a junior in high school and got married when I was 21, there have been a couple of times where I've thought that things might have been easier if we had waited a little bit longer to get married so that we could have been finished with college first just to avoid some of that stress but I've never regretted being married to him and I'd do it over again in an instant.

mrshudson618

I said more, but I think instead of a quantitative difference, it is a qualitative difference.

It is just a different type of love. Less exciting, but more solid.

The best I can come to explaining it is that we are completed in each other now. There is a oneness that we didn't have before.

TJ1979

Still no baby @mapleme?

TJ1979

Aww.  Mine was just a few minutes ago.

Sure would like to see those hiccups from the outside.

KLXVI

Into+the+Kitty said:

KLXVI said:

I guess I should be a SS, but I voted "the same".  We dated for 8.5 years before getting married so I knew what I was getting into  

Now, if the question was loving him differently after having a child, that might change my answer. 

Did you get married after having a child? I'm asking since your wedding day, how would you quantify your love?

Nope, but I get what you are saying.  Having a child has been such a recent addition to our lives since we started dating when I was 18, dated 8.5 years, and then 5 years later had L.  I guess what I was trying to say was that overall I love him the same, but I would love him more if he would make the jump from good to great father.  I feel like he still ranks his work family a little too high compared to his real family.  I'm probably being too hard on him, but after knowing him for so long I know his potential.

YellowLily2013

Seeing DH as a dad makes me love him more and more. It's just freaking adorable.

I feel like such a newbie relationship wise compared to the others on the board! We've been together 4 years and married 1.5 years. So I'm sure we'll have lots of ups in downs in our future.

It's fun getting back to "us" after the newborn survival mode we had been in.

LaBellaVida

I voted more.
We married after only a few months of meeting. Honestly, I'm not sure I "loved" him when we got married. There were times in our marriage I told myself if I got a do over, I wouldn't. We've over come allot of issues and I'm happy now.
Plus I wouldn't have my beautiful kids...I definitely love him now, no doubt about it.

Eta: we've been married 10 years as of Monday.