[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by peter12

I'd really love to hear about some of your experiences.

I am 8 months into "moving in" with my girlfriend, and while the first 3 months or so were quite hard, it has turned into a period of day-to-day bliss.

Without question, the first year for us was VERY hard, and for a variety of reasons. We were both very young and still finding our way in life, and that put a lot of stress on our relationship. My wife was the first person I had lived with outside of my family, and that was also a big adjustment. I think based on my own experiences that I would encourage anyone not to rush into marriage. My marriage works very, very well, but in many respects I think it is a result of good fortune as much as anything.

Originally Posted by peter12

Few things:
[*]We share almost identical interests, opinions, personalities, basically everything. It is important to be with someone almost exactly like you. Opposites do not attract. There are certainly small differences that make life more enjoyable, but you have to share fundamental premises.

This works for many people, I am sure, but I cannot say that my wife and I are all that similar. I am a professional academic, and she has a high-school education. She loves to get out while I enjoy my solitude and often will choose to stay close to home (I used to joke with my friends and neighbours in Chilliwack that I was the "Hermit of Promontory": Our house in Canada is located on a hill on the edge of town, and with working primarily at home, there would literally be days when I would not leave my neighbourhood—at all). I have a high-level time commitment to my work, and my wife is most often bored out of her skull by my research, and she has NEVER read a single thing that I have ever written and published.

Originally Posted by peter12

[*]We do almost everything together, and enjoy it. This includes trips to the grocery store.

This is extremely important. The key to a great marriage is really in how much each partner enjoys the other. My wife and I also do practically everything together. Especially now that we are in Norway and are slowly adjusting to a new culture, language, and making new friends, we and our kids basically form one another's entire social world, and it could not possibly work if we didn't honestly enjoy one another's company. After twenty years, she is the one that I plan my leisure time around, and I have a very difficult time even imagining what life could be like without her.

Originally Posted by peter12

[*]We don't have a lot of money (mid-twenties in school with loans, rent, etc...), but this doesn't get in the way of us having fun. We have never had a money fight, ever.

Disagreements over money are almost guaranteed relationship killers. My wife and I have never had a lot of money, and neither of us is very good at managing our finances, but we have both come to understand very early this principle point: Be open about what we earn and what we spend. Be honest about are concerns and fears. Be supportive of one another's hope and desires even if we cannot afford them. A good case in point:

We no longer own a car and are entirely dependent on public transportation. It is really easy for me because the bus stop is close to our house and the university is only 6–7 mins. away. With me at work every day now (this is a HUGE change for me personally), my wife does all the shopping and looking after things at the house, and there are a number of days when it is really difficult for her getting around and getting things done whilst riding the bus. She really wants to buy a car, but we honestly can't afford it right now, and likely won't be able to until the summer or fall. We don't fight about it. She understands that she needs to be patient and realistic. I understand that she has extremely valid reasons for wanting to make the sacrifices to buy one. We know that at some point we will eventually arrive at a consensus because we trust each other and have very high respect for one another.

Originally Posted by peter12

[*]You start to realize that while big gestures are a lot of fun, it is the little acts of love, and affection that generate the most positive good will.

To be perfectly honest, practically all of my "big gestures" end disasterously, which is why I seldom even think to make any any more. However, I have absolutely needed to supplement these with lots of "little acts of love". In turn, I find myself hardly caring about "getting" from my relationship. After a while the time invested, the security that we have built in our love for one another and the opportunity to spend our lives with the same person whom we enjoy and adore is all the reward.

Originally Posted by peter12

[*]Obey a simple algorithm - relationship stability = frequency of lovemaking - frequency of quarrels. On almost every given week, we make it well into the positive side of that equation. Just from experience, weeks that go into the negative are bad.

That is an excellent formula, and without question, the more intimacy there is in a relationship, the healthier and more enjoyable it is. As you get older, and the longer you are together, you will probably find that your frequency in lovemaking and your frequency in quarrels will both decrease. In our case the ratio is still positive, but the data set on either side is much smaller. I often worry about people who depend so heavily on sex as the "key" to their own relationship: there are some couples who only get along in bed, and this is really a recipe for disaster. As you mentioned in your first point, it is really important to ensure that you enjoy one another's company in a wide variety of situations.

One of the "sacrifices" every man should make in his marriage is spending time doing things that he ordinarily wouldn't do, because his wife wants to do them. For me, this means that I spend a lot of time watching chick-flicks, and bad reality romance shows with my wife. (I can't complain, considering that she watches and enjoys sci-fi movies, The Walking Dead, and Homeland. While we were still dating she actually went into a comic book store and bought a number of classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics to fill out my collection!) This is perhaps the most pertinent lesson I have learned from my observations of pseudo-reality love connections on television, and I believe it addresses this point:

I really find ABC's "The Bachelor" to be an insufferably stupid show for this very simple reason: The premise of building a sustainable relationship under ideal circumstances is doomed to utter failure, and it is idiotic to believe that a man and a woman can genuinely find real love while jet setting in a fantasy world. A much better premise is in the lesser known "Love in the Wild": Couples are challenged to build relationships amid a mix of triumph and adversity. The things that I take the greatest satisfaction from my own marriage are those big challenges and hard times that we have overcome and come through. Without the tough times, we would never have made it in the first place.

Originally Posted by peter12

[*]And of course, communicating your feelings, and apologizing for miscommunication.

True again. Looking back on it just now, I have a difficult time even being able to recall the instances when either my wife or I have needed to apologise to one another. Not because we have just stopped doing it, but because with each passing year, the times in which we disagree, or say or do stupid things are just becoming substantially more rare. As time passes we are finding that we are much more like-minded in those things that matter the most.