Not Happy Marriage Quotes & Sayings

I am very happy that he [Pope Fransis] did clarify this [marriage defenition], because the other situations can be partnership, can be relations, but certainly not marriage. — Christoph Schonborn

Mercifully, I was at that age when reading was still a passion and thus, save for a happy marriage, the best state possible in which to keep absolute loneliness at bay. I could not have made it through those evenings otherwise. — William Styron

For those who are gifted for the soteriological pathway of marriage, it, like every such pathway, naturally offers not only trouble, work, and suffering but the deepest kind of existential satisfaction. Dante did not get to Paradiso without going through the Inferno. And so also there seldom exist "happy marriages". — Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

Choosing a mate is not a matter of can they do the job, rather will they. A partner of "potential" doesn't make for a happy marriage. Their actions have to be in line with your needs. — Shannon L. Alder

Not satisfied with what he's got? Is that it? That's husbands all over. Ungrateful pigs. You do everything for them, you bring up their kids, you cook their food, you wash their clothes, you warm their beds, you fuss over your face day after day so they'll fancy you, you wear yourself out to keep them happy and at the end of it all, what happens? They find someone else they fancy more. Someone young some man hasn't had the chance to wear out yet. Marriage is a con trick. A girl should marry a rich man, then at least she'd have a fur coat to keep her warm in her old age. — Fay Weldon

I'm not complaining about Romance Being Dead - I've just described a happy marriage as based on talking about plants and a canceled Ray Romano show and drinking milkshakes: not exactly rose petals and gazing into each other's eyes at the top of the Empire State Building or whatever. I'm pretty sure my parents have gazed into each other's eyes maybe once, and that was so my mom could put eyedrops in my dad's eyes. — Mindy Kaling

The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself. — Joel Osteen

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims
these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.
We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.
And we certainly wouldn't write about it. — Jeffrey Eugenides

If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I really am happy for Kiley. And for you and every other happily married lady. Except for that I'm not happy for you. I kind of want you all to drop dead. — Rainbow Rowell

Married women are far more depressed than married men
in unhappy marriages, three times more; and
interestingly
in happy marriages, five times more. In truth, it is men who are thriving in marriage, now as always, and who show symptoms of psychological and physical distress outside it. Not only their emotional well-being but their very lives, some studies say, depend on being married! — Dalma Heyn

Grow up, Bailey."
"That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep. — Erin Morgenstern

Seek a happy marriage with wholeness of heart,
but do not expect to reach the promised land
without going through some wilderness together. — Charlie W Shedd

A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action. — Robert Southey

Living with myself wasn't all that easy. I was not the young girl I once was. Once upon a time when I looked in the mirror, I saw this happy glow. Now nothing glowed except the leftover face cream from the night before. — Brenda Perlin

I once asked her if she was happy. "That depends on what I am able to get done today," she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: "I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?" "I don't know," she said uncomfortably, as if she'd never really considered such a question. "When there is little you can do, you do what you can." Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. — Padma Lakshmi

I'm with someone who makes me incredibly happy. I'm not one of those people who subscribes to the idea that marriage takes the romance out of things. I think it gets better, it deepens. I love being a wife. We have a blast. — Emily Blunt

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate. W. H. Auden — Gary L. Thomas

No matter how much I tried to justify the affair, the fact remained that I was a deceitful person. One moment I was making out with a man and an hour later I was in bed with another man. Who had I become? What had I lost in life that led me to do this? Did I not have a perfect life? Was I not happy? Of course, I was happy. I knew I was happy and content. Had I become greedy? I was in a maze and I could not find a way out. — Jagdish Joghee

Marriage is just a piece of paper if it's not a happy one. — Phil Lester

The business didn't trust it, audiences didn't want it, but marriage could never be ignored. It was everywhere and nowhere, the genre that dared not speak its name, the ghost that hung over the happy ending of every romantic comedy. As a subject, it existed to be achieved (jolly comedy, great love story), destroyed (death, murder, tragedy), or denied (divorce). If it was achieved, the movie was over. If it was destroyed, it was no longer there, gotten rid of and abandoned once and for all. If it was denied, it was only temporarily shelved (for some fun) and could be reassuringly restored. — Jeanine Basinger

Happy are they, who in the matter of marriage observe three rules. The first is to marry only in the Lord, and after prayer for God's approval and blessing. The second is not to expect too much from their partners, and to remember that marriage is, after all, the union of two sinners, and not of two angels. The third rule is to strive first and foremost for one another's sanctification. The more holy married people are, the happier they are. — J.C. Ryle

The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house - this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance, but it is not the world's desire. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is with great regret that my marriage to Grant is ending after more than six years. He is a special man and we have two amazing children together Ruby, 5, and son Rocco, 3. This was a mutual decision that was not taken lightly and we are committed to our children and will work together to ensure their happy and healthy upbringing. — Jillian Barberie

I am a plant, she said, I need fire, earth, water. Otherwise I will be stunted. And: Is marriage not such a stunting? The fire goes out. The wind grows weak. The earth dries out. The water dwindles. I would die. You too. She tossed her hair over her shoulders. Purple lavender. And what if it wasn't like that, I argued. What if the daily routine, our daily routine, is my promise to you? Your toothbrush next to mine. You get annoyed because I've forgotten to turn the light off in the bathroom. We choose wallpaper we think is horrible a year later. You tell me I'm getting a belly. Your forgetfulness. You've left your umbrella somewhere again. I snore, you can't sleep. In my dream I whisper your name...You tie my tie. Wave goodbye to me as I go to work. I think: you are like a fluttering flag. I think it with a stabbing pain in my heart. For Heaven's sake, is that not enough? Is that not enough to be happy? She turned away: Give me time. I'll think about it. — Milena Michiko Flasar

I have a very happy marriage and friends who keep my feet on the ground. But looking for satisfaction in life is difficult. Maybe being happy is as simple as not being unhappy. — Jasper Carrott

I am happy. I have a wonderful marriage. I was in a not-great second marriage for 20 years, then I fell in love with Steve, my first husband, again, and we remarried. I wore the dress from our first wedding in 1982 - it was tight, but I could get into it. — Marie Osmond

She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Why risk the rare happy marriage-rarer still, a love marriage that endures-for something as common and toxic as complete, unthinking, transparent honesty? Who would be helped by my telling? Me? not at all. I was made of steel, I promise you. — William Landay

In all I have ever done for Him, you have a large share. For in making me so happy you have fitted me for service. Not an ounce of power has ever been lost to the good cause through you. I have served the Lord far more, and never less, for your sweet companionship. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The problem with love, as I see it, is this: in order to be happy you need to have security, whereas to be in love you need insecurity. Happiness requires confidence whereas love requires doubt and anxiety. Thus, in summary: marriage was conceived to ensure mutual happiness but not enduring love. And to fall in love is not the best way to find happiness; if it were, we'd all know by now, wouldn't we. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear, but it makes perfect sense to me: marriage mixes together things that weren't meant to go together. — Frederic Beigbeder

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups. — Ada Calhoun

Around the time my first marriage of twenty-one years was ending, I had spent a lot of time reflecting on the fairytale promises of living "happily ever after and being "forever in love." I thought about how the expectations of our families, friends, religion and society each contribute to the guilt and shame many of us experience when our partnerships and marriages do not work out the way we expected. The familiar promises of being together until death do us part" seemed antiquated and misguided in our modern world. Why wan't being happy, in love and committed 'for now' a more widely accepted and reasonable vision? — Theresa J. Knight

The rival you both share is myself. I do not wish to marry ... First, because my past habituated me to loneliness. I had always thought I hated it. And now I have found I treasure it. I do not want to share my life. I wish to be what I am, not what a husband must expect me to become in marriage. My second reason is my present. I never expected to be happy in life. Yet I find myself happy where I am situated now. I have varied congenial work ... I am admitted to the daily conversation of genius. Such men have their faults. Their vices. But they are not those the world chooses to imagine. I have no genius myself, I have no more than the capacity to aid genius in very small and humble ways ... I believe I owe a debt to good fortune. I am not to seek it elsewhere. I am to see it as precarious, as a thing of which I must not allow myself to be bereft. — John Fowles

It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all and they pull down the average. — Jonathan Haidt

Who knows what kind of marriage they have? The kinds of marriage people have in this country, Bo, very strange. It's not like back home where a man can do as he sees fit and a woman follows him. Over here it's reversed. Women tell their men what they want and the men do it, because they say happy wife, happy life. This society is funny. — Imbolo Mbue

The good news is that I believe every woman who wants to can find a great partner. You're just going to need to get rid of the idea that marriage will make you happy. It won't. Once the initial high wears off, you'll just be you, except with twice as much laundry.
Because ultimately, marriage is not about getting something
it's about giving it. Strangely, men understand this more than we do. Probably because for them marriage involves sacrificing their most treasured possession
a free-agent penis
and for us, it's the culmination of a princess fantasy so universal, it built Disneyland. — Tracy McMillan

But love does not mean marriage, a baby, forever. Love means you make me happy until you don't. — A. Igoni Barrett

Loving she realises is a verb. It is an act. It is not enough to say you love someone, and then forget about them, or trust a relationship will stay strong simply because you share a house or children or a life.
Loving requires acts of love. It requires thinking of your spouse, doing things for them to make them happy. It requires acting in loving ways, even when you are tired, or bogged down with work, or so stressed you are waking up every night with a jaw sore from grinding your teeth.
They forgot to do that, she now knows. They forgot to love each other. They expected love to continue, without putting any work into it, and today she knows this is why her marriage failed. — Jane Green

You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it, but most don't have enough, so they become watchers of game shows, y'know, things like that. Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something, and you get married, like marriage is a victory and you have children like having children is a victory, but most things people do are a total grind, marriage, birth, children, it's something they HAVE to do because they have nothing else to do. There is no glory in it, no esteem, no fire, their lives are flat and the earth is full of them. Sorry, but thats the way I see it. I could not accept the snail's pace 8-5, Johnnie Carson, merry christmas, happy new year, to me it's the sickest of all sick things. — Charles Bukowski

It is noteworthy that few works of fiction make marriage their central concern. As Northrup Frye puts it, with his accustomed clarity: 'The heroine who becomes a bride, and eventually, one assumes, a mother, on the last page of a romance, has accommodated herself to the cyclical movement: by her marriage ... she completes the cycle and passes out of the story. We are usually given to understand that a happy and well-adjusted sexual life does not concern us as readers.' Fiction has largely rejected marriage as a subject, except in those instances where it is presented as a history of betrayal
at worst an Updike hell, at best when Auden speaks of it as a game calling for 'patience, foresight, maneuver, like war, like marriage.' Marriage is very different than fiction presents it as being. We rarely examine its unromantic aspects. — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Acceptance doesn't mean tolerating unhealthy relationships or problem behaviour. In relationships, acceptance has two key qualities. First, it means being willing to recognize that your partner, right here and right now, is struggling too. It means allowing for the possibility that his motivations might be good and constructive, even if it doesn't feel that way. It means not getting caught up in the belief that he's wrong or doesn't care about you, and instead embracing the possibility that he's doing the best he can. He may even be trying to make you happy--but in a way that only makes sense inside the male mind. Acceptance also means embracing the formidable task of empathizing with your partner's struggle when you least want to do so. — Shawn T. Smith

What if marriage is really about making us more like Christ, not so much about making us happy? — Kirk Cameron

Who cares if it's a campaign strategy, and who are other people to say it's ridiculous? I'm not gay, but I strongly support gay marriage. What if someone told you you couldn't marry the one you love? I think it's about time! Let people who love each other that are the same sex get married. They deserve the right to be happy also. — Barack Obama

I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy. — Amy Engel

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
his huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows of that upper storey
where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
her body turned into transparent salt,
and her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
she who gave up her life to steal one glance.

1922-24 — Anna Akhmatova

The ultimate purpose of marriage is not to make us happy but to glorify God. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Felt like yesterday, all that bodily joy. Begun so young they didn't even know what they were doing and they wouldn't give it up, so when they were old enough, they married. Not the worst thing to build a marriage around, such juice. The first years had been delirious, the latter ones merely happy. — Lauren Groff

All I mean is that, hypothetically, why would we need to see anyone else? And as long as we're going out and happy, wouldn't marriage be the goal, even if it's a decade away? 'Cause if it's not, all this is pointless. — Daria Snadowsky

Maybe faith was never meant to be some perfectly plotted, passion-driven paperback. Maybe faith is the long story of a happy marriage -- an average life made fuller, not smaller, by the pockets of silence and darkness that break into it. — Addie Zierman

The seeds of a happy marriage are sown in youth. Happiness does not begin at the altar; it begins during the period of youth and courtship. — David O. McKay

This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam. — Thomas Hardy

To keep me happy he can't just buy me presents, he has to be present. I want love. Not Louis Vuitton. And that's one hell of a burden for any man to carry. — Amy Mowafi

If young people could only realize that a happy marriage depends not only on the present, but upon the past, they would be more reluctant to enter into loose, intimate relations with anyone and everyone. — Billy Graham

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher. — Socrates

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is? — George Bernard Shaw

Not every happy person is married, and, Not every married person is happy. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I think everyone should be happy. I think a fool is going to go against same sex marriage at this point. Look how long it took him [Obama] to say he was for same sex marriages. You understand? I'm up for it. If everyone else is for it, then hey, to each his own. I don't have personal feelings towards it because I'm not involved in that lifestyle. I want people to be happy. It makes for everything to be better — Curtis Jackson

On the eve of our marriage, there might have been good reason to really ask, "What is marriage?" Is it the impression and expectation that this man can make me happy - can be a savior that helps me forget the tragedy of my parents' failed relationship as well as my own as his child? What is certain is that marriage was not to be a commitment or covenant. — H. Kirk Rainer

It's just like calling homosexuals 'gays.' Gay means happy! You know, it's just to try to dilute it so that it becomes socially acceptable, and if you say anything against homosexual marriage or anything - 'Oh, you're not tolerant.' So we're supposed to prostitute our principles, on behalf of tolerance. — Ted Cruz

The wife carries the burden of the marriage on her shoulders," his mother said. "Her husband, herself, both of them, their covenant, and everything else that gets added over the years. And all that is very, very heavy. It is in her power to keep the marriage alive and thriving, but also to drive it to the brink of crisis and back again. For whatever reason, men have not taken this role upon themselves. Perhaps they are not capable. Now, as you know, every empty space, every abyss created in nature fills itself, and this one is filled by women out of a sense of responsibility and maybe also the will to control. It's a simple matter, really, but in case you haven't understood, I'll explain it: your wife must be happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and impassioned, and then the burden of marriage will not be heavy for her. She'll be prepared to take it upon herself for better and for worse until the very day that one of you shuts your eyes for good. — Anat Talshir

People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars. — Iris Murdoch

Fourth time's the charm, she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that's not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don't lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that's one recipe that can't be tampered with. — Alice Hoffman

When you realise that money doesn't actually make you happy, it's a quick fix to have things you've always wanted, but then when you have it, you realise that's not what actually makes you happy. It's more about having a great marriage and happy children; that's what life's all about. — Shane Filan

I believe in marriage. I believe that two good people can be happy together for a lifetime. It's the only thing even close to a religion that I have, and I cling to it with almost messianic zeal. But it is a belief system that makes unreasonable demands on its adherents, all of us sacrificing to the bone for a reward that may or may not come at the end of our days; and all of us steadfastly refusing to see the mounting evidence that long-term happy marriages, if they exist at all, are pretty hard to come by. We all want to think that miracles are possible. Otherwise, marriage is just a lot of hard work. — Kate Hilton

No one would dream of expecting a single individual to be "happy" - once someone is married, however, everyone is very astonished when he is not happy! — Rainer Maria Rilke

Hurry home, darling," she said. "Hurry home." And how's that for a man to have! When I hung up, I stood by the phone all weak and leaky and happy if there is such a condition. I tried to think how it had been before Mary, and I couldn't remember, or how it would be without her, and I could not imagine it except that it would be a condition bordered in black. — John Steinbeck

I've got nothing against gay marriage, it's not my issue. All right, I want homosexual Americans to be happy and to pursue happiness. — Bill O'Reilly

Is a series of promises." When she'd realized that - marriage equaled promises - she hadn't feared it. As much. "Maybe you can't keep them all. The whole till-death-do-us-part business. Maybe you can't keep that one. Life can be long, and people change, circumstances change, so okay. You realize you don't really want this life or this person, or the person you made the promises to isn't who you thought, or they've changed in a way you can't accept or support. Whatever. You make a choice. Stick and try to work it through, or don't. But don't give me the boo-hoo, I'm not happy so I'm getting naked with somebody else on the side. It insults everybody. — J.D. Robb

a lasting marriage is worth $100,000 a year, since married people report being as happy, on average, as divorced (and not remarried) individuals who have incomes that are $100,000 higher. So, before you go to bed tonight, be sure to tell your spouse that you would not give him or her up for anything less than $100,000 a year. — Anonymous

Big businesses are beginning to realize that the employee who puts his job before his home life is not as effective as the one who has a happy, fulfilling marriage. — Kevin Leman

Aim high, but do not aim so high that you totally miss the target. What really matters is that he will love you, that he will respect you, that he will honor you, that he will be absolutely true to you, that he will give you the freedom of expression and let you fly in the development of your own talents. He is not going to be perfect, but if he is kind and thoughtful, if he knows how to work and earn a living, if he is honest and full of faith, the chances are you will not go wrong, that you will be immensely happy. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Happy relationships depend not on finding the right person, but on being the right person. — Eric Butterworth

A woman is never so happy as when she is being wooed. Then she is mistress of all she surveys, the cynosure of all eyes, until that day of days when she sails down the aisle, a vision in white, lovely as the stefanotis she carries, borne translucent on her father's manly arm to be handed over to her new father-surrogate. If she is clever, and if her husband has the time and the resources, she will insist on being wooed all her life; more likely she will discover that marriage is not romantic, that husbands forget birthdays and aniversaries and seldom pay compliments, are often perfunctory. — Germaine Greer

What has become clear to me is that it is not the inherent nature of being gay that causes such a reduced life; it is, rather, the social circumstances around being gay: the perceptions of it and the cultural norms that it is said to violate. As some of those norms have changed, I have been able to be gay, to have a marriage, to have a family, and to have - if there is wood to knock on - a fortunate and happy life. — Andrew Solomon

mong the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying. — Wilkie Collins

Marriage is a really scary thing. I'm excited about it. I know it's not a mistake, it's the absolute right thing to do. I'm really happy about it. I really, really love my fiancee. We're good friends and I think it's going to work. But that's just the point - it's going to take work. It does make me feel vulnerable to be like, wow, I'm committed to this person for the rest of my life. — John Rzeznik

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix. — David Byrne

Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement. We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are that you're not going to be very happy. If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness. — Andy Rooney

Charlie dear, it is I who have to be proud of you. And I am very, very proud of you. You have called me pretty; and as long as I am pretty in your eyes, I am happy. You, dear old Charlie, are not handsome, but you are good, which is far more noble. — George Grossmith

I have to tell you that equality has nothing to do with marriage. The basis of a good marriage, a reasonably happy marriage-don't delude yourself, there is no such thing as an entirely happy marriage-is, precisely, inequality. It's essential if two people are to feel mutual admiration. ................................
if you reflected a little more deeply you'd realize that you can only admire that which you do not possess. You do not admire in another a quality you have yourself, you admire what you don't have and which you see shining in another in all its splendor. — Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

She's not happy in her marriage. Not unhappy exactly, but not happy. He doesn't want kids, so that's nothing to look forward to. Her life is chock-full of quiet tedium. Suddenly, she falls in love. And sure, there's the excitement of being with her lover, but there's also the excitement of not being with him. Of waiting and going on with her ordinary life. And all that dullness now becomes part of the drama. Because that's her cover story. All the dreary anguish and monotony that fills ninety-eight percent of her life is electrified with meaning, since it now serves as the perfect camouflage to hide the two percent of passion. And, yes, she felt guilt and, yes, she felt shame. But those are powerful emotions too, and were all part of the glorious transformation of a featureless bland life into an adventure. — Phoef Sutton

Love her or some other guy will.
Love like there is no tomorrow, cause there may not be.
Never take what/who you have for granted cause it will end up turning into something you had.
Do what it takes to keep her happy at any cost to you're pride.
Treat her like she is you're queen & She will make you feel like a king.
Love lost is more painful than an unhappy marriage. — Mitch Albom

It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through
a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Do not give up on love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I am happy to be alone.
Perhaps this is true.
Or perhaps I am the biggest coward of all. — Heather Day Gilbert

To bear a child or to get married is not the primary goal for a lady who wants to become successful in life — Sunday Adelaja

George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: "Yes, this will do". Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving ... me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha ... Sad, sad, sad. — Edward Albee

Mutual respect, the soft answer, financial honesty with the Lord, prayer. "I do not hesitate to promise that if you will go to your homes and cultivate and nurture it among these four cornerstones, your lives will be happy." — Gordon B. Hinckley

Buttercup's parents did not have exactly what you might call a happy marriage. All they ever dreamed of was leaving each other. — William Goldman

Antoine and Marie-Anne de Lavoisier held out for Lamanon the prospect of something he had not even known he was missing till that day in May - not so much marriage between equals, although that did seem true of them, or even marriage based on love, although that was obviously the case as well, but the happy union of science and humanity within an individual, and the joy that was possible when one person, so self-integrated, encountered another such person. — Naomi J. Williams

That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect. — Maria Semple

Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordinary clothes, exciting no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He had never been curious, he said, when he lived in Rouen, to go to the theater and see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he could not explain to her, one day, a riding term she had come upon in a novel.

But shouldn't a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert

There are times when we can be so annoyed at each other, Elliot, and we yell at each other. But when push comes to shove, we let it go, and we're back to our normal selves, because being unhappy is part of being happy. When two people get married, they say two people become one. No, I don't agree. Two people should remain two people but walk side by side. I've not become Elliot. Elliot has not become Hunny. We remain Hunny and Elliot. And to me, that's important. — Dave Isay

My first marriage was not happy. I married him because I was impressed that he knew which wines to order and how to leave his visiting card. Ridiculous reasons. — Jean Seberg

I am satisfied that a happy marriage is not so much a matter of romance as it is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one's companion.
-Gordon B. Hinckley — Gordon B. Hinckley

The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good enough), restlessness, resistance to growing up, PMS, not knowing how to live without drama, fearing that you're getting happy, and happiness is boring.
The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that if I stayed, something was going to change, and that something was probably me. I didn't know what changed me would look like, or if I would like her more or less than I already did. Would I still recognize myself? Would I still be myself? — Anna White