Helloooo everyone! I’m popping my head back in here for a moment to talk about newlywed bliss (or lack thereof) after some encouragement from the bees of the board. 
Mr. Dragon and I have been married for just over four months, and I’m still getting congratulations from people around town. We didn’t put out any kind of formal marriage announcement, but pretty much everyone in our little town reads the newspaper and noticed that, as a reporter, my last name changed on my byline back in September. Every time I run into someone who hasn’t seen me since then I get another, “Hey, you got married! Congrats!”
The question that follows is usually along the lines of, “So, newlywed life is awesome, huh?” or, “Is the honeymoon over?”
The last time someone asked me how married life was, I answered honestly. The person posing the question is a really forthright dude and in the relatively early stages of married life himself (though not as much of a newbie as me) so I figured he’d get it when I said, “Kind of aggravating…but, kind of awesome, too.”
I got this in a fortune cookie, posted it to Facebook with, “I’m already married!” and lots of people laughed at me.
He chuckled and said, “I was gonna tell you that, but I thought I’d wait.”
Mr. Dragon and I had our first big fight about three days into our honeymoon. I found myself sitting on the deck of our hotel room, facing the water, taking in the beautiful scenery…and fuming, while Mr. Dragon sat inside on the bed, upset because we were fighting on our honeymoon. I vaguely remember the whys—I think I was being hungry and impatient and he felt like I was being a bully (and I probably was) and I felt like he was being whiny (and he probably was). Anyway, that was the end of our ability to say “We haven’t fought as a married couple!”
Thing is, we’re pretty volatile. We always have been, even though Mr. Dragon hates to fight and I am allegedly non-confrontational. Our good days obviously outnumber the bad and we always kiss and make up…but seriously, seriously, the last few months have felt HARD.
While I hear all about couples who never fight and see the happily-ever-after romantic candlelit dinners and rainbows and puppies on TV, it doesn’t match up with my personal experience of newlywed life thus far. I didn’t think being married would change anything—we lived together for a long time before marriage, we have already seen the worst of one another—but it did.
Being husband and wife doesn’t make those, “Will you put your damn socks in the laundry basket already,” “Why are you spending so much money on groceries,” and “Can’t you just give me some private time?!” fights go away, in my experience. In fact, it makes them all the more important, in my view, because instead of just hearing, “I forgot to put my socks away when I got home,” I hear, “I forgot to put my socks away when I got home and you married me so now you will be surrounded by filthy unwashed socks FOREVER TILL DEATH DO US PART.”
Truth: In a moment of desperation after another argument, I started reading The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.
Truth: I felt really awful when I realized that a lot of the “this is a really bad thing to do” behaviors apply to me, or Mr. Dragon, or both of us.
Truth: I think we have always kind of behaved like this…so it’s not that scary, because I know we have toughed it out this long, and with the right attitude adjustments we can keep on truckin’ (and we are doing better already).
Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed with marriage and conflict I look around online for a bit of help. One piece of advice I read said, basically, marriage is hard and if you expect it to be easy you are in for a big ol’ nasty surprise. Having a ring on my finger doesn’t make me impervious to all of the frustrations and annoyances and breakdowns we experienced as boyfriend and girlfriend, or as engaged people.
However, said ring on my finger is a good reminder that we have made a loving commitment to work through all of our rough stuff, together, always, till death do us part (and I actually rallied against having the whole death do us part thing included in our ceremony because I intend to harass Mr. D in the afterlife, too).
Because amidst those gloomy, difficult days, we have a lot of light in our lives now that we’re married. We tackle challenges head-on as a team (we’re just working harder on that “love is a battlefield” issue).
Mr. Dragon always tells me, “One day we won’t even need to speak these words anymore, because we will have been together for so long that we’ll just understand.” It makes me wonder how many of those lovely gray-haired couples I see walking hand-in-hand had a rough start, that they can look back on now and chalk up to being a feisty newlywed.
This is, of course, not intended to scare people who are soon to be married and expecting a 100% awesome time as a newlywed, or to cast any kind of shadow on people who are blissful all the time.
But much like Mrs. Wizard noted, people don’t often share the more challenging parts of a wedding day. I don’t think a lot of people share the darker sides of newlywed life. I think there are those out there who still have their bad days among the adventures and shared breakfasts and car rides and dreams. I am definitely not afraid to admit that I am one of those people.
So, newlyweds—how is it going? Is it what you expected? And those who are still planning, I want to know—do you think your relationship will change post-wedding, and if so, how?
We are also married since September. I applaud you for pointing out that life is not always rosy, even as a Newly-wed when everyone thinks it should be perfect. We also fought on honeymoon so I know what that is like, but since we got back things have changed for us. When coming home to find dirty socks on the floor, my mind jumps to ‘it will be like this till death do us part, so why sweat the small stuff’. To me it seems like all the stupid things we used to have small arguments about don’t really matter anymore. We are married, we are a team and all the things that would make life easier (like the socks actually being in the laundry basket) probably won’t change and something about getting married kind of just got me to accept that knowing that we made a bigger committment to each other. I’m not sure I’m making sense and I think this is coming across like you shouldn’t make an effort once married. Actually the opposite is true, something about being married has made us each less individualistic and we try to help each other out more, but we also let more of the smaller stuff slide. Which is odd, we have also being living together for years so I had no idea it would change like this for us.
Thank you for posting this Miss D! We are still 4 months out from our wedding and have been living together for a year and a half, so I didn’t really think our relationship might change post-wedding.
BTW, the thing about the socks made me laugh out loud 
@legowife: Lately I have been trying to be less of a tyrant about things like socks. 
I really like your flipside of my thought process and I’m going to start trying to use it! I know that we will always have our quirks that won’t go away, and they were there before our wedding (it’s not like I always remembered to put the dishes away BEFORE we got married and it’s only now that I forget) so it’s high time to accept some of it as unchangeable and label it ‘small stuff’.
@Miss Care Bear: Totally not meant to scare people, haha! I know a lot of newlyweds who really didn’t change much at all. I hope you guys find yourselves in total sock-free bliss.
Dragon, thanks for opening up and writing about this. It’s really hard to admit to other people you’re having big blow-out arguments, when you’re supposed to be shrouded in newlywed bliss. Mr. W and I have been mostly on Cloud 9 (and maybe it’s partly because we got married right before the holidays, so it was non-stop parties and gifts and celebrations), but we’ve had a couple huge blow-out fights. One was before a dinner party, and we felt weird going and told everyone I was sick. I do a lot of those bad behaviors when we argue, and I’m trying really hard to work on my bad habits, because they tend to escalate small disagreements into huge passionate arguments. Just keep being intentional about your marriage and constantly try to improve and work on things, and I think you will be fine. The first step, our pastor told us constantly during our premarital counseling, is staying conscious and intentional about your relationship and your role as a partner, and it sounds like you’re already there.
Thank you for posting about the challenges! We are still a few months from our wedding and have not lived together yet due to our current job locations, so I am anxious about what challenege lay ahead of us but very excited at the same time. Is it weird that I almost look forward to a fight or two about socks?
thank you for posting this, it’s truth, real life and it’s nice that not everyone glamorizes everything all the time
My aunt said that her first year of marriage was the worst year of her life – There was a lot to adjust to and things weren’t perfect just because they had a marriage certificate.
I think the biggest adjustments come from negotiating a life living together. DH and I were living together for 3 years before we got married so coming home after our minimoon felt just like any other day. I guess we’d already gone through the adjustments of living together, so the first year of marriage so far (7 months in) has actually been really special.
But I’m sure it’d be way harder if we were living together for the first time.
Bravo and well said! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. I know I have felt this way many times and wondered why I’m not blissed out all the time like newlyweds “should” be. I don’t feel as crazy knowing that there are others who go through the same thing.
Just exactly what I needed to read today! It makes it a lot easier to know that others are going through the same growing pains of being a newlywed!
Thank you so much for writing this! I got married in September and also lived with my husband for years before getting married. However, we have both found that married life has been really tough so far. It’s nothing very serious but all the little fights really add up and we find ourselves fighting more often than we ever used to. My mom told me that the first year is the hardest because you have to set up the way you want to live for the rest of your life (well, she said it better than that but I can’t remember right now the exact words she used). Basically, that first year you are setting up both of your expectations that you didn’t have or notice as much when you were dating. Do you want your husband to take the garbage cans down the driveway? Then tell him that you expect him to do that. Otherwise it won’t get done. My biggest struggle has been realizing that my new husband isn’t a mind reader- I constantly get caught comparing what he does to what my dad did growing up. My dad did all the “manly” things around the house but I wasn’t around the first year of my parents marriage so I didn’t realize that this only happened because my mom made it clear early on what she expected him to do.
Anyway, thanks again for showing the real side of marriage and making me feel so much better that I’m not the only one who is having newlywed growing pains
@mrm915: My parent’s call it the ‘slamming doors’ years They also said it was down to expectations. My dad went fishing on a railway line (like he always did before he was married and living with my mom) and when it got home hours later my mom was upset (and slamming doors) as she thought he might have been hit with a train or something when he came home so late. He didn’t even think that she would worry!
Wow, thanks for writing about this. It’s always nice to know you’re not such a weird-o We have four more months until we get married and I too didn’t expect anything to change since we’re already living together. We are both very stubborn and argumentative so we always have and probably always will have lots of arguing fights. I know they’re going to happen, we just try really hard not to let them escalate into something bigger.
It’s such a breath of fresh air to hear this!
We got married late September but DH and I are still in a LDR (though, we are only 1.5 hrs apart) and we have a different set of problems that people just don’t seem to understand. And, it just gets tiring to tell people that we’re apart for x, y, and z reasons. We have the rest of our lives to play house!
@Mrs. Wallaby: I never really thought about how the time of year would factor into our newlywed lives, but we got married right before it gets unbearably dark and cold here, and every year, winter is a struggle — I think if we had married in spring or summer we would have had a few more months to enjoy ourselves before descending into the winter blahs!
@LNJohnson: Haha, those household fights are a rite of passage when you move in with one another, I think!
@lorelai: Yep, we lived together for about the same amount of time before getting married, so coming home was pretty normal (though I had bronchitis, haha). I am not sure if it’d be better or worse if we were going through the whole living together adjustment, too!
@mrm915: Yep, I’m learning that you really do have to ask for what you want (and you have to swallow your pride if you get asked to do something differently, too).
@legowife: Hah, that is the reason Mr. D now has a cell phone with Find my Friends installed! 
@mnp: I had a friend here who was living apart from her husband for work purposes and people just didn’t really get it — it’s not that they WANTED to be separate, but they had to, and everyone bugging her sure didn’t help.
YES. Love this. SO true. Me and Mr. P had been living together for 4 years before the wedding/together 5. We didn’t turn into honeymoon stage lovey dovey birds just because it’s our first year of marriage. We’re not even those types of people & I don’t think I ever could be. And, you know… it’s okay. We are who are we are, and we’ll continue to make it work like we have been. Thanks for keeping it all in perspective. =)
Thank you for this post! I love my husband and being married, but newlywed life hasn’t always been rainbows and butterflies… we’ve had some really difficult times too over the past few months that we’re still working through. I agree that the first year can be the hardest, but the growing pains you’re experiencing now will hopefully make your marriage stronger!
thank you for posting this,Thanks so much for taking the time to write this.
We didn’t live together before we got married in August, so we had HUGE adjustments to make. We’re also a bit older than newlyweds, so maybe we’ve had more time to learn to control some of our impulsive lashing out. Because of that, we didn’t get in a lot of out-right fights, but there was some times of underlying strain. We talked about it and realized we wanted to treat each other in loving, patient and tolerant ways and that it took a lot of energy to do that. We also learned to say with great sincerity, “I love you dearly, but you’re driving me insane!” I think if we hadn’t held our tongues more, we would’ve had a lot more fights than 2 or 3. We definitely felt that honeymoon bliss between the fights, though. And honestly, it made the fights easier to deal with because the bliss reassured us and motivated us to work things out.
That part about the socks is hilarious because it puts it all into crystal-clear focus. For some reason I’ve been very aware that “what you see is what you get” going into this marriage… maybe because of a story I heard/read once about a recent widow who said she used to nag her husband constantly about those socks… and now that he had died she’d give anything for him to leave his socks in the middle of the floor again just once. So, I try to remember that when hubby does little things that bug me.
Thank you for posting this, & I have totally had that thought about cleaning up his laundry FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE lol!
Our first year of marriage was also hard — not because of our relationship, but because it felt like a whole mess of crap kept getting thrown on us at every turn. (Mainly job-related, but when you’re unemployed for months on end, your self-esteem/sex life/emotional stability go down the toilet.) So while we rarely had blow-out fights (we’re not really fighting people), it still felt like a mess of a year. Great post.
Mrs. Dragon, Sioux Lookout/Brockville, ON Age and Occupation: 24, Journalist Fiance's Age and Occupation: 35, Graphic Designer Engagement Date: August 22, 2011 Wedding Date: September 2012 Venue: Mother of the Bride’s Residence About Me: I moved to Northern Ontario for a job, expecting to be single for the year I'd be there. Within one month I was dating a co-worker, and now, more than two years later, we’re planning a wedding and I’m still a Northern girl. I’m a reporter and a photographer for a small-town newspaper, and I get to do all kinds of fun, exciting, and sometimes weird things at work. When I’m not getting the scoop, I’m cooking, adventuring, playing with our three black cats, or blogging.
Latest Gallery Pics