First Night After Marriage Quotes & Sayings

What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so distracted at work that sometimes when I called, he'd put me on hold and forget me, only remembering again when I'd hung up and called back. The way he wore his pain so privately, whistling around the house after we'd had a spat, pretending nonchalance, protecting you and your sisters from discord, hiding behind his good nature, inadvertently — Jan Ellison

I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in Provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with Larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together. — Vivien Leigh

As she took her father's arm and prepared to march down the aisle, Margaret called, "Do not forget what I told you about tonight." How could I? Angelica thought as her mother's lecture about the wedding night and the marriage bed flitted through her mind. "There will be incredible pain the first time, darling," Margaret had said. "And you might bleed. But you must submit to him without complaint until you are pregnant with his heir. After that, he should leave you alone for the most part and fulfill his baser desires on a mistress. — Brooklyn Ann