What do you see as a positive marriage? Is having six month’s worth of income saved in the bank a mark of achievement? Or is having the largest house on the street? Do you imagine a happy family going to football games together, or is attending the opera what you see as family bonding? Does going on a lot of vacations as a couple mean you’re winning at life? Or does having dinner as a family signify success?
Couples can enter marriage with very different definitions of what it means to win. Early on, they can be so caught up in the romance of the relationship that they don’t stop to discuss what happiness in couple-hood and family-life really means to them. When they start living together and children arrive, these differing definitions can be sources of conflict, which can lead to divorce.