I thought, while I was sharing my favourite baby words of wisdom in the post below, I’d also share my favourite wedding words of wisdom.
Many, many years ago, we attended the wedding of our pals SmokingToaster and CapnPlanet. At the wedding CapnPlanet gave a speech in which he quoted his older sister, Susan. Susan had, at the time, been married for 10 years, so CapnPlanet asked her what the secret was to a successful union. She said, “The first five years…they were really hard. The next five years…well, they were pretty hard too.”
Funny but also oh, so true. I’ve never forgotten that phrase and I haul it out every time Sir Monkeypants and I have a tiff. It’s just a little reminder that getting married is just the start of the story — that keeping a happy marriage going takes a lot of work.
That said, I think I might amend the quote for future generations to be, “The first year was really, really hard. The remaining years settled down into just really hard.”
TurtleHead 
Well, I’m happy to report that Susan is still married. I don’t think I could appreciate advice like that at the time, but of course, she was totally right. I should have asked her over Christmas what happens after ten years! Hopefully it gets a little easier now, right? 🙂
(Btw, I’m “smokingtoaster”, no underscore. I was reading your post and I wanted to get back to my own page quickly, so I clicked on my name in your post and was totally shocked to wind up at a different page! For a second I thought someone had hijacked my page. Yikes.)
I feel so old… it wasn’t that long ago, was it?
I’ve thought of that quote many times over the years, but I’d completely forgotten that I said it in a speech at our wedding. Pretty funny.
I think that our experience has been more like what you describe with your children – there was a period of time (longer than four months!) during which we chafed a lot, but over time we have gradually found our “rhythm”. A lot of it seems to involve learning who your partner is, and how to read between the lines of their words and body language. I don’t like to think of it as trying to understand what your partner doesn’t want to say, rather than trying to understand what they don’t know they’re trying to say. Learning those things is hard, but oh so rewarding.
Hmm, or maybe there’s a simpler reason why the “child” model of getting along works for us…