Marriage. Tying the knot. Wedded bliss. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. And then what happens? That’s where this popular little jingle ends and actually where all of the hard work in a marriage begins. At its core, marriage in the modern age is a social ritual and where two people come together and pledge their love for and commitment to each other, usually in front of their friends and family; have a great big party and then get on with the business of being married and starting a family and a life together. Historically, it was a tool used for powerful families to strengthen alliances, expand power bases and maintain the class system.

As children, we dream about growing up, falling head over heels in love with our Prince or Princess and plan the perfect wedding in our dreams – probably complete with a big white dress, horse drawn carriage and even bigger ring.

In the western world, more than 90% of the population marry at least once by the age of 50 but it’s alarming to note that between 40-50% of these marriages will end in divorce and the rate is even higher for subsequent marriages.

Why is the number of marriages ending prematurely rising so abruptly? Well, it’s one thing to be riding high on the emotion of a passionate love affair and decide to get married and spend the rest of your lives together, but it’s another thing entirely to actually make it work in reality when you have to do all the boring things like pay the bills, clean the house and put up with each other’s annoying habits.

Add to this the stress of children and financial problems and marriage is definitely not all its cracked up to be or what all those Disney movies lead us to believe when everyone lived happily ever after; it’s actually really hard work and definitely not for the faint hearted.

15 When The Bubble Bursts

Once the honeymoon is over, the photos are in the album and the wedding itself is slowly being paid off, reality starts sinking in. Yeah sure, you’re still in love, but along with maintaining the romance, you’ve now also got to maintain the house, the yard, the car and everything else. Rather than planning on elaborate dates and romantic weekend getaways, you’re now faced with vacuuming the house and washing the car on a Saturday morning before driving kids around to various sporting and social commitments and scrubbing the bathrooms in the afternoon.

And this is fine – if you know that life is all about balance and that there will still be time for some fun, just not all the time. Sometimes people can face difficulties in their marriage if they aren’t prepared for the mundane of every day life and for whatever reason, think that life will continue to be a dream of room service and champagne - or even remotely resemble something like the life of those impossibly happy couples in the movies and Disney stories we grew up with that gave us such high standards. It’s easy to think that you’re life is not as great as it ‘should’ be when you’re comparing your everyday life to the highlight reel of someone else’s on social media.

14 Can You Guess The Leading Cause?

Financial issues and pressure is the leading cause of stress in relationships and if not resolved can lead to feelings of resentment, be the cause of arguments and fights and potentially even lead to divorce. Working out what to do with your money is one of the most boring aspects of being married, but also one of the most important, and as difficult as the conversations can be, you should definitely discuss how to organise your money before you reach your breaking point.

Problems with money are further highlighted once children come on the scene and one parent may not be working outside of the home to care for the children and therefore rely on the other for financial support. At a time when you will probably have more expenses then ever before, you will most likely be only on one wage, at least for a time and then probably paying for childcare. Obviously, the bills need to be paid and part of being an adult is being financially responsible, and let’s be honest, no one loves having boring conversations about budgeting. But being open and honest about money – about how much you’ve got and how you’ll spend it together - might just be the one thing that saves your marriage.

13 Traumatic Events

Obviously, significant life changes and traumatic events can have a huge impact on any person but when it happens to people in a marriage, their reactions to this can determine the fate of their relationship. Take for example the loss of child either through accident, illness or stillbirth. The parents can choose either to fall into one another for support, guidance and reassurance to help them cope and pull through this difficult time; or they can pull away from one another and seek comfort elsewhere.

There could be situations where one spouse places blame on themselves or on their partner for what has happened and these kinds of toxic emotions will eventually lead to a damaged marriage and ultimately divorce. When couples are faced with unexpected trauma and loss, not only are they dealing with the emotions related to this, but they also need to find a way to move forward in their relationship and create a new ‘normal’ rather than continue to have a lingering sense of wishing for the way things used to be.

Other significant events which can negatively affect a marriage are things like one partner dealing with the effects of PTSD as a result of a military deployment or working on the frontline as a first responder. Often, this person won’t want to burden their partner and family with their feelings and the difficult things they have encountered, but their behaviour can get to the point that makes family life unbearable and volatile.

12 When Indulgences Get Out Of Hand

There is some correlation between the rise of addictions and the rise of the divorce rate – is it linked or is it just a coincidence? Well, we can’t safe definitively, but since the rise of the smartphone, meaning that we now have the world literally at our fingertips, it is easier than ever before to indulge in old vices and develop new ones. It seems that addictions to explicit content are no longer just for celebrities as more and more couples are seeking support and counselling services to help them overcome these problems.

It could start with having a quiet wine or two at the end of the day once the kids are in bed to help you relax and unwind and before you know it, you’re calling past the liquor store on the way to school pick up and downing more than a bottle a night. It could be placing a few bets on a football game that quickly escalates into online betting and gaming ‘just once more’. It could be watching a bit of harmless adult videos because since the kids came along there just hasn’t been as much action in the bedroom, but then you find yourself watching in your lunch break and needing more and more and even seeking partners outside of the marriage.

Apart from creating emotional and financial strain on the marriage and the family, these addictions can also be dangerous and even life threatening if someone is taking intravenous drugs, engaging in unprotected sex or driving whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

11 Different Life Stages

Perhaps one of the most surprising statistics in divorce is the rate at which older people are getting divorced after having been married for 20, 25 and even 30 years. Why? Well it can come down to the fact that once the children have been had, raised and left for College or work, the parents find that they no longer have anything in common with each other. It could be that over the course of their marriage they have become so lost in their roles as parents that they have forgotten to nurture their relationship with each other and no longer remember why they got married in the first place.

Once the children have left the nest and the parents have retired and finally have all that time to spend together like they had looked forward to, they’re now sitting on the couch with nothing to say and nothing in common because now that the kids are gone, there’s no shared goal and nothing keeping them together.

10 Meddling In-Laws

One of the biggest problems when getting married is that you are not just marrying your partner, you are also welcoming a whole family into your life and that can be super tricky. It’s especially difficult if your in laws are interfering, meddlesome, nasty or overbearing. If they’re the kind who just drop in unannounced and stay all day and expect to be fed and then pass judgement on everything that you do from the way you hang the laundry and which order you do the dishes to the decisions that you and your spouse make on raising your children.

They might be the kind who expect you to spend every holiday with them. And this reason is one of the most difficult to raise with your husband – how can you tell him that you can’t stand his mother? Especially if he is particularly close to her and his family and their opinion matters to him and he can't see anything wrong with asking permission to paint the hallway a new colour. This is the kind of situation which can place significant unnecessary pressure on a marriage and in some cases, cause it to end prematurely.

9 Communication Issues

This is such a key part of any relationship but such an easy one to get very wrong. We all communicate all the time ‘what do you feel like for dinner?’ and ‘have you let the dog out this morning?’ but how often do you actually sit down with your partner and really communicate and discuss the issues that you’re facing as a family? How often do you take the time to have a serious discussion about your wants and needs? Do you ever really talk about how you are feeling and what you need from your spouse?

These are the kinds of conversations that we need to have more often, before we get to counselling. How many times have you had a fight over something you ‘think’ your partner has done? When really, that wasn’t their intention and they didn’t even know that you took offence to it and before you know it, it’s escalated to a full blown fight and now you’re bringing up things he did five years ago. Despite all the talking that goes on in relationships, are you really communicating or are you just letting things fester and building up a grudge against your lover from which it will be impossible to recover?

8 The Other Woman

This is arguably the single biggest issue that ends marriages – infidelity, or cheating when one person in the marriage has a relationship with someone else. Of course we all think of doing it in motel rooms or cars on lunch breaks, lipstick on the collar and receipts in the suit pockets, but it is surprising to note that emotional affairs are on the rise and can be just as damaging to a marriage as physical ones.

Emotional affairs are when one person in the marriage seeks comfort in another in the form of text messages, emails and phone calls, often venting about their partner or children, and finds that this other person is receptive to their needs and makes them feel valued and understood. Often, an affair can be a manifestation of other problems in the marriage that we’ve already discussed like communication or the partner not feeling connected after the arrival of children. These kinds of secretive relationships can be devastating for a marriage, and often the original couple cannot recover the lost trust or overcome the betrayal and clear breaking of marriage vow of ‘forsaking all others’.

7 Domestic Violence

For most people, the presence of domestic violence in a relationship would be a clear deal breaker and signal the end of the marriage. However, it is not always as easy as this as the abuse may be extreme and the victim is too frightened for their or their children’s safety to leave and risk enraging the perpetrator even further. In Australia, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner and these alarming statistics would likely be higher in more densely populated countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.

The aggressor in these situations will likely have emotional control over the victim and make all sorts of excuses which could blame the victim for provoking the violence and promises that it will never happen again. Leaving a relationship where abuse is present is also made more difficult if there is financial abuse and control meaning that the victim and children do not have the resources and money to leave and go to a safe place. Violence and abuse of any kind in a relationship can also have a profound impact on the children in the relationship as they experience fear, stress and trauma beyond what they are capable of understanding and dealing with and is clearly not a good example of what a healthy relationship should look like.

6 Too Much "Me" Time

It seems impossible to think that you could be lonely when you’re married and most likely living in a house full of people, but sometimes there is no place as lonely as being surrounded by people. Whilst you’re living and working together to keep the household ticking over and raising great kids, you find yourself at the end of a long day sitting on different couches watching mindless television programs or scrolling through your phones and not engaging with one another beyond the superficial.

You might not want to spend time together anymore doing something as simple as taking a walk or having a real conversation about how your day was and what you’re currently going through. It’s a difficult position to find yourself in when you no longer have a connection with the person you have pledged to spend your life with and feel like you can never re-establish the love and closeness from the beginning of the marriage.

5 Adding Numbers To The Family

Children are a normal and welcome part of most marriages and indeed some couples can’t wait to begin their lives together and start a family. However with a baby and that happiness, comes an enormous amount of stress. There’s the lack of sleep, exhaustion, financial stress of the mother most likely being off work and added expense of a tiny person – diapers, food, clothes, toys, childcare. Loss of connection between parents as focus shifts to caring for the new baby is perfectly normal, and trying to figure out to make everything work especially in the first few months is tough work.

Add to this, multiples. Parents of multiples (twins and higher order multiple births) have a 50% divorce rate by the time their children reach school age. Along with double (or more) the love comes double the chores, double the lack of sleep, double the workload meaning that most of the time, both parents need to be engaged in caring for the children leaving very little ‘down time’ individually or as a couple which leads to burnout, resentment and frustration which even though it can be misplaced, is still very real.

4 Forgoing Intimacy

Maybe in the beginning of your relationship there was plenty of action between the sheets and you were both happy with this and anticipated it would continue into eternity because of course, you loved each other and were absolutely attracted to one another. But fast forward a few years, a few kids, perhaps a few kilos and all the exhausting responsibilities of being parents and adults and things just aren’t what they used to be. This could be because the children have taken over your bed so there’s no alone time anymore or due to hormonal changes, which, by the way are completely normal, means that one or both are just not that into doing it anymore.

Maybe one or both of you struggle with the changes that come with a postpartum body which has put some inhibitions on a previously rocking love life. Put one or all of these things together and the next thing you know, it’s been twelve months and there just doesn’t seem to be any way to get back to where you once were, or at least a point where both people are happy with the physical intimacy in the marriage. Changes in libido and habits can be more than frustrating – they can leave people feeling unloved, unattractive, self conscious and worthless. If a couple is unable to connect on this level, it could set the relationship up for further problems and reach a point from which there is no return.

3 Inequality In Housework

Traditional gender roles are still very much in play even though we’re now in 2017 and supposed to be living a more equal society. Even as a woman is working in a full time job, she will still be doing the bulk of the household chores and almost certainly shoulders the emotional burden of the home and family. When a couple welcomes children to their family, it is most likely the mother who will take time away from work outside the home to care for the child or children and, therefore, be expected to keep the house clean along with everything else which falls under ‘home duties’ - even though the husband and other household members are also contributing to the mess.

Sometimes, the person left with the bulk of the housework may end up feeling like not much more than a glorified house cleaner and there is definitely the potential to feel unappreciated and not like an equal partner; which plays into a very archaic view of marriage. Like many other issues in marriages, this feeling of being unappreciated and unnoticed, can lead to further complications like a break down in communication and possibly even feelings of resentment and contempt; leaving that spouse open to the idea of finding comfort and happiness in something outside of their marriage and family.

2 Different Discipline Strategies

So far so good in your marriage, you’ve managed to keep the communication channels open, still being intimate, got the budgeting sorted and you both are equally responsible for keeping the clothes washed and the floors clean but…when your babies turn into toddlers and start needing some structure and discipline, you are worlds apart. Hypothetically, for the sake of the argument you’ve read the books about early childhood brain development and gentle parenting and you’re more inclined to talk about feelings and apologising and taking responsibility for behaviour.

On the other hand, your husband is after a more firm discipline style which favours time outs, consequences like confiscating special toys or even spanking. But despite how much you try, you can’t seem to meet in the middle on this topic and it leaves you both feeling flustered and powerless. But even worse for your children, you’re inconsistent and therefore ineffective as parents. As the gentle parent thinks the stricter parent is too harsh and vice versa, it is a vicious cycle that just keeps going without resolving anything but adding a lot of tension into the relationship every time you need to deal with your child’s behaviour (which, if they are three years old, is multiple times a day). Eventually, it reaches the point where, for the sake of your child and your own sanity, you can no longer continue to parent or live in this way and you may be headed to the courts.

1 Different Values

In the first flush of romance and passion and a ‘love will conquer all’ attitude, it may be easy to think that you and your lover can overcome everything that stands in your way. In some cases, one partner might even change religion to smooth things over with a family, but does this conversion actually solve anything? When push comes to shove, have people actually changed or was it just for the paperwork? Such differences in values and beliefs may become more apparent when raising children – whose religion will the children take?

When the Presidential elections come around, could you find yourself on opposite sides? Do you have different opinions and core beliefs about things like same sex marriage and the treatment of refugees? Sometimes, these differences could be so severe that one or the other partner starts to question whether they can truly remain in a committed relationship with someone who’s ideas and opinions are so different to their own. This then creates another issue – how can you continue to raise children with someone who is so different to you? And so different to the person you thought they were?

Sources: APA.org, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, LiveScience.com, GoodTherapy.com, NewBginningsDrugRehab.org, CoupleCouncelling.com.au