c172g

Sorry for the late reply, but I think the question has already been answered regarding my original post. I think it would have been MUCH easier to walk away from living together with someone than actually being married & getting to the point of divorce. Like Dr Phil says on TV, he & his wife have been married for I think 30 years & they have never once mentioned divorce. I don't have quite that many years under my belt (10 this year) but we haven't either.

My wife and I are simply different in the one respect, which is how we pick up after ourselves. I continually clean up all day long...not to say I'm continually dirty, but if I'm going to the bedroom, I look for something that might need to eventually get there & put it away, on my way there. My wife will leave everything scattered for the entire day, and spend an hour at night putting stuff away. It's the same with cooking, I clean dishes as I'm cooking, she gets every pot, pan & dish out in the entire kitchen, messes them up, and cleans for an hour after things are done cooking. We simply operate differently.

I will now add that having a two & four year old have changed my high-strung ways about cleanliness, since it is now three (wife and two kids) versus the anal clean up guy. It's hardly even an issue anymore.

I never lived with anyone except my college roommates, I'm just from a family where you wouldn't really do that & expect to ever see your parents at your place. As I said before, it probably wouldn't have worked with my wife & I, and I'm glad things are the way they are.

That being said, I'll also add that I would never say my wife & I have an "easy" marriage...I don't think there is such a thing. There will always be something that irks you, maybe pisses you off, maybe drives you absolutely nuts, could even put you on the brink of throwing in the towel all together. There is no one I'd rather be married to, but we both do shit that drives the other one crazy. The thing that keeps us together is our ability to discuss it without having to strangle each other and our commitment that we made to each other. I feel like I married my ideal mate, and we work at our marriage every day. In turn, every day is better than the last.

There are I think five top reasons people get divorced: money, sex, infidelity, in-laws, and children (desire to or not to have). As far as our marriage goes, I'd say money problems occasionally arise, as we all want a little more than we have, but we do pretty well with SEPARATE bank accounts & checkbooks. As a guy, I'd always like more sex but am happy with our frequency, which is 2-3 times a week. We both dated people who cheated on us before we got together, so infidelity isn't even a remote possibility for either of us. In-laws are what they are, her family drives me bonkers once in a while as I'm sure mine does her. I can always leave or go downstairs. I didn't care if we did or did not have kids, she wanted them & so it happened. By far the greatest gift of my life.

Sorry for the lengthy (and off the subject post) but once I started rolling I couldn't stop.