So your wedding has been and gone and you’ve promised to love, cherish, honour (and so on) each other for the rest of your days. Now what? After all the planning and excitement of THE BIG DAY, it can feel like rather an anti-climax. Let’s face it: while married life can have wonderful highs, and sometimes awful lows (not too many, we hope), most of the time it falls somewhere in the middle, in OK-land. And will your relationship be any different to how it was before?  If you’ve been living together for ages before you marry, nothing will really change. Right? The answer is: Yes ... No ... Maybe ...

Here are ten things you might not know about being married:

1. For starters, you will now be able to talk about each other as ‘my husband’ or ‘my wife’, which tells the world that you are married. This will change the way other people look at you and your relationship. You will be viewed not only as individuals, you will also be viewed as a unit – a married couple. And, rightly or wrongly, people will make assumptions about you based on that.

2. Next time you have an argument, you’ll realise you can’t just walk away from it. If your relationship is going to last, you need to resolve issues when they arise. Sometimes, in the day-to-day ordinariness of dishes, dinners, nappies and Netflix, you may wonder if you really have what it takes for the long haul. You’ll look at your future differently, knowing that the decades ahead will be filled with this person, and conflicts between you will take on a new dimension.

3. Marriage won’t automatically ‘fix’ any problems you have in your relationship. In fact it may make those problems more marked. And they lived happily ever after ... exists in fairy tales, not real life. Marriage isn’t a magical solution to anything; in fact, it’s another responsibility that you take on when you say your vows. That’s not to say that it isn’t really rewarding — it is — but sometimes it’s also hard. Marriage is like any other part of life: imperfect and complicated — even when it’s also really good.

4. Your spouse is your lover, but they’re also your flatmate, and those little annoyances like leaving the top off the toothpaste, the toilet seat up, and slurping the orange juice, will still be just as irritating. Maybe even more so.

5. You’re not just marrying your partner, you’re marrying their whole family. Love them or loathe them, they are now a part of your lives. You’ll have to learn to negotiate the needs of your spouse’s family alongside those of your own parents and siblings. Working this out can be complicated, but it’s worth the effort, for all of you.

6. Your marriage will have bad days as well as great days. Sometimes, you’ll have days when being married is not your happy place. But you’ll also have days when it is your happiest place in the world, and you’ll think it was the best decision you ever made. Both of these days are going to happen, and both are OK. In fact, knowing that there are good days ahead can help to get you through the bad ones; one bad day here and there doesn’t mean you have a bad marriage.

7. Being together is great, but sometimes you may need your own space. This is okay! Sometimes it’s just really nice to be on your own, doing your own thing. It doesn’t mean you love each other any less. If you make space for each other when it’s needed, the together times feel even better.

8. The idea that ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry’ belongs in the movies, which is where it came from (does anyone still remember Love Story?). There will be times when you let each other down. Apologise, forgive, and try to do better in future.

9. In the flurry and fun of organising your wedding, you may have overlooked some of the fundamentals of a shared future, like: how you manage your finances, whether or not you want children, what your values and your long-term goals are. After the wedding these issues will still be there, only more so.

10. Finally, I truly believe marriage is one of our most wonderful institutions. It’s no accident that we have a combined department of Births, Deaths and Marriages. These are the three most significant thresholds in our lives. We have no control over the first two; marriage is the only one that we ‘enter into freely’, and whereas birth and death and your wedding are all particular and special events, your marriage is an on-going process. Marriage is a cornerstone of being human, and all cultures have a version of it. Ultimately, it gives the two of you a shared history that is special and unique. You will have your own in-jokes, your own secret signals, the things that make you both laugh, and the things that make you cry. These things, and so much more, are what make marriage so totally worth it!