Marriage is no fairytale – but it can be “happy ever after”

It was, most people have agreed, a fairytale wedding. The bride looked stunningly beautiful; the groom immensely proud. The occasion was uplifting, the ceremony moving and the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge looked incredibly happy together.

However, as the four-times wed Janet Street Porter said in a newspaper article, marriage is no fairytale. When all the excitement has died down and the novelty of being a wife and husband has worn off, marriage is actually pretty mundane.

Prince William’s new bride has let it be known that for the foreseeable future she won’t be carrying out royal duties without her husband, preferring instead to be a housewife at the couple’s rented cottage in Anglesey, where the Prince is a search and rescue pilot with the RAF.

It’s a role Catherine has been playing for the past two years, since William was posted to the area, so she knows the ropes well. But one of the dangers of living with a partner before you get married is that there can be expectation, however subconscious, that life will be different once you’ve tied the knot. When it becomes clear that the domestic situation is largely unchanged, disenchantment can kick in. This is borne out by statistics, which show that a couple who cohabited before getting married are more likely to divorce.

There are, however, plenty of advantages to sharing a home with someone before deciding to wed: only by living alongside a partner do you really get to know them.

Daily life, for most people, is full of downs and well as ups and, a lot of the time, it’s uneventful and far from romantic.

There will be plenty of excitement for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge when they embark on royal tours, but for the vast majority of newly-married couples, life jogs on pretty much as normal.

That is why it’s so important for couples to be realistic about what marriage is about – and how to sustain the relationship in the long term. We live in a culture awash with “must have” gadgets and accessories, lofty ambitions and constant pressure to earn more money, win job promotion and obtain the best schooling for children.

It is easy to lose sight of what is really important in life – which is our close relationships with friends and family. As last week’s blog mentioned, having a great friendship with your spouse is one of the most important aspects of the relationship. It is this – rather than high romance – that can make the difference between whether a couple stay together or choose to split up.

Being realistic about marriage also means being prepared to work at the relationship. Louise Redknapp, married to footballer Jamie, said in a media interview last week that she never allows herself to get complacent. “I’ve lived this life with him for 15 years now. I know it’s nuts, but I feel that if I take it for granted, that’s when it could all be taken away from me. Even now when I drive into my house, I still think, ‘I can’t believe I live here’. And I touch wood.”

She says, sensibly, that she doesn’t feel she can trust her husband 100 per cent.

“I read those interviews in which someone says, ‘I trust my husband completely. He’d never do anything to hurt me. Blah, blah, blah…’ And I always think, “You never know how things might change in 20 years, ten years, two years’.”

Being grateful for what you have, being prepared to work at keeping the relationship healthy and not expecting married life to be a bed of roses are all ways to maximise a couple’s chances of living “happily ever after”.