Psychological researchers consistently find that love alone is not nearly enough to sustain couples through the ups and downs of marriage. Your skills and expectations matter just as much — if not more — as whether or not you actually love your partner.
Yet, when marriages fail, partners are still inclined to cite “falling out of love” or “incompatibility” as reasons. But nine times out of ten, the problem can’t necessarily be linked back to a single wrong choice, nor a single night where things all went wrong. Usually, partners simply don’t enter their marriage knowing how to be married.
That’s why there are certain “marriage lessons” every couple has to learn before committing. Think of them as foundational understandings. They won’t make your relationship perfect, but they will help you handle imperfection when it inevitably arrives.
Based on decades of psychological research, here are two of the most essential ones.
1. Problems Won’t Disappear After You Say ‘I Do’
Most of us picture marriage with the same rose-tinted glasses: as two people, in love, doing life together. What we don’t always include in this vision, however, is the conflict that’s guaranteed to ensue at some point or another.
In fact, Dr. John Gottman’s research — included in Case Studies in Couples Therapy: Theory-Based Approaches — suggests that approximately 69% of couples’ marital problems are “perpetual.” In other words, a vast majority of them aren’t “fixed” neatly or tidily; they have to be rehashed and remanaged, time and again.
As scary as it sounds, this still isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Marriage will almost always involve people who bring entirely different preferences, habits and temperaments to the table. If anything, conflict is to be expected; seeing eye-to-eye every waking moment of every day would be far more concerning.
For instance, you might be a night owl, while your other half loves to wake up at the crack of dawn. You might like to save aggressively, while your partner pinches pennies to save for bigger adventures down the road. Differences like these don’t make you and your partner inherently and irreparably incompatible. It just means you need to be okay with the fact that you’re likely going to butt heads from time to time.
This is exactly why you need to be prepared on what to do when those moments do eventually arise.
The fatal flaw most couples make is assuming that if they really love each other, these conflicts are immediately null and void; their love for one another alone will carry them through. However, nothing will set you up for greater disappointment quite like this mindset will.
In reality, even the happiest and healthiest couples you know fight. They just fight differently. They don’t become mean simply because they’ve got a bone to pick. They don’t become pushovers in favor of keeping the peace, either. They simply remind themselves that approaching their differences pragmatically is the only way to achieve a mutually happy ending.
In this sense, you can’t ready yourself for marriage by finding a partner with whom you’ll never have to argue with. Instead, you have to commit to someone with whom you can fight fairly — someone who won’t berate you or shut down the moment things get slightly turbulent.
You don’t have to agree with them about everything. You don’t even have to communicate perfectly. All that matters is that you know how to disagree with one another without making each other feel small.
2. Getting Married Isn’t A One-Off Decision
Perhaps the most enduring myth about marriage is that the hardest part of it all is the wedding day itself. That when you’ve stood at the altar, made your vows and signed the papers, everything else will magically “fall into place” if it’s truly meant to be. But this could not be further from the truth.
A 2014 study published in Psychological Inquiry argues that the modern institution of marriage has seemingly become a vessel for personal fulfillment, rather than one for connection — or even love. Modern lovers expect their spouse to be something like a Swiss Army Knife: their co-parent, their co-provider, their best friend, their confidant, their muse.
Of course, it’s deeply rewarding when you find someone who meets these (many) expectations. But if your spouse can’t — or simply doesn’t want to — immediately, the marriage becomes more fragile.
Meeting these expectations requires sustained, daily effort. In this sense, you can’t simply say “I do” and expect your spouse to immediately become an entity that satiates your every need and desire. The real work of marriage is the hundreds of tiny everyday choices that follow after you say “I do.”
Although they can become your greatest supporter and confidant, know that this is something that takes a good amount of effort and conscientiousness. In other words, it’s not something that happens in an instant.
A good marriage, in this sense, is dependent on whether or not you’re a good partner. You can’t simply treat it as a word that refers to your current legal or relationship status. Rather, start viewing it as the series of decisions you make, each day, that will ultimately determine whether or not your love will survive.
Marriage is the choice you made today to listen to your partner when they needed you. It’s the decision you’ll make tomorrow to share the chores that need to be done around the house. And it’s the choices you’ll make in the days, months and years to follow — to show them affection, to put your phone down when they’re speaking, to celebrate them, to cry with them, to be there for them.
It can help to think of marriage less like a contract you sign once, and more like a system of operations that you have to maintain on a daily basis. Every couple will have seasons where these efforts will feel easy, and others where it will feel utterly exhausting. But approaching it from this angle, rather than as a one-off, static commitment, will make it all the more resilient.
Did you enter your marriage ready enough for what it takes? Take this science-backed test to find out: Marital Satisfaction Scale