Has every married couple gone through periods of their marriage where they just felt like acquaintances living together?

Married Couples Share Marriage Experiences and how they have been able to deal with difficulties in marriage

(Question and Answer)

Ans 1: My husband and I have been together for 25 years and married for 15 years. Yes, there were years we outright hated each other. There were years we struggled to love each other. There were a few years we were indifferent to each other. Now, we are in a really good place where we have teamwork and mutual respect for one another. It took a LOT of work and counseling on both parts. We had to learn how to fight fairly, what is worth fighting about, and what to just let go or compromise on.

Ans 2: My first marriage lasted 4 years. I don’t remember feeling as though we were acquaintances living together, I do recall feeling as though I was living with someone who didn’t seem to care about my needs (we came home pregnant from our wedding-I was 41, and he was 48 and had no time to waste haha) and I felt he went on with his routines and left me to care for the kids (I came to the marriage with another), work my own full time, demanding career, and on little sleep. Having been a single mom prior to marriage, I was not against doing it again rather than being in a marriage where I felt like a single parent anyway, not to mention lonely. So we divorced. I’m two years into my second marriage and we are very intentional in communicating needs, spending time together, connecting-he too had been married for 14 years, together 20, to someone he ultimately felt like barely functioning roommates with-his ex actually had an affair, which left him devastated. Sharing a home and children shouldn’t feel lonely. My fear was that I would become apathetic to the loneliness and have an affair as well, so I left.

We must remember never to take our love for granted. Be intentional in our actions of love, be intentional in the time we invest in our relationship, nurture it, learn our partner’s love language, and make sure they feel appreciated and secure in the choice to share a life. It’s always a choice. From day one until the last.

Ans 3: I can’t say I have ever felt like that. Maybe I haven’t been married long enough, but I hope that's never an experience that I have.

Even in hard times, bad times, my husband is way more than an acquaintance. We’ve been together since May 2008, married since February 2009. We have 3 kids and we’ve had opposite schedules. I miss him when he’s gone. I miss him when I barely see him.

He’s always my best friend, my lover, my home. Never just an acquaintance.

Ans 4: I’ve been married for 31 years and I’ve gone through a rough patch like that. I’ve also gone through a patch where I was convinced that I hated him too. lol (That was back when he was in his early 40’s and had drinking buddies who he went out with on the weekends and forgot where he lived every Friday — Sunday). lol

I just persevered and hung in there because of my wedding vows. “Till death, due us part”, he wasn’t dead yet, so I just kept hanging in there. And things eventually turned around for the better. Each time, we found each other again and fell back in love & got back on track. You just don’t give up and throw in the towel, that was the key.

Ans 5: I don’t know if you put a lot of thought into your choice of words. I don’t think we ever thought of each other as merely “acquaintances”.

Over 47 years there have been ups and downs. Closeness and distance. Times when we didn’t even like each other. Mornings when we had major arguments . . . and made love that evening. Screaming, throwing things, or going somewhere else — alone — for a day or so. But I don’t think we ever reduced each other to mere acquaintances.

We were already more than acquaintances on the day we first saw each other. A year later we thought we knew each other well enough to mutually commit for a lifetime — aware that some things remained to be discovered. For nearly half a century we have refined our knowledge of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, faults, and virtues. But simply acquaintances? No.

Ans 6: In my opinion, it should never feel like just acquaintances living together. It should feel like best friends living together. Passion may not be as strong later in the marriage and some years are better than others but love and caring should always be there.

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