How do you stay married?

There's no back door, just the road ahead. I married my wife five-and-a-half years. We had a beautiful yet small wedding with our families and afterwards all of us went away for the honeymoon together. Yes, I know that's strange but it turned out spectacular.

After all those years of dating, you'd think that we knew everything about each other. We're one of those modern couples: backpacked around Laos, Thailand and South America, and lived together for a few years before marriage. So we thought everything would be exactly the same, but better. Even our families could holiday together.

The only difference would be the ring and a signed paperwork, right?

Wrong: There is a subtle yet very important difference: commitment. When dating, at the back of your mind there's always the option of walking out or simply saying "it's just not working anymore". Not so with marriage. There's no back door, and it's hard work.

This piece of advice - the first in a string I was to hear about marriage while growing up - came from an aunt and to be honest, it went in one ear and out the other. At the time I had no concept of what she was referring to. Hard work to me was cramming for an exam the night before or pulling together a last-minute presentation on my team's performance when I joined management.

I had no idea what real hard work was. You know the intangible stuff that can either make or break a relationship. Hard work is constantly taking a long look at yourself and facing those "less than shiny" personality traits,-on didn't even know you had. It's about admitting that every piece of well-meaning advice you've heard about making your marriage a success could be true.

For me, the hardest part is admitting that I'm wrong, even when it's clear that she is right. Once, after a particularly intense argument with my wife, my wife called my aunty Julie. When she confessed that she was worried that something was wrong with her marriage, she chuckled and said that what we were going through was normal. "We tend to get more emotional, and subjective, when it comes to matters of the heart. We can't think logically. We stop responding to what someone says and start responding to how they say it.

Like how men think about marriage from a completely different perspective. Man get the impression that women think about how great married life is going to be and are usually shocked by the amount of compromise and work it requires. All men think about, on the other hand, is how much sacrifice is involved.

Women can be simple to please by men. If you came home with something as simple as a key chain and said. 'Honey, I saw this and thought you'd like it,' your wife would be so touched. ‘

A keychain sounds easy enough as a key to a happy marriage, so why don't men get it. Why can't wife just accept husband the way he is? It takes time to reach this point in a marriage. You can always spot the newlyweds. They argue over everything and nothing all at the same time. But give them a few years and they'll get better at deciphering what is worth an argument and what is not.

My marriage recognised that over the years, we've got much better at predicting each other's reactions. It's great as it not only allows us to communicate quicker, but we also know when to let things go. Sometimes saving something does more harm than remaining silent.

There was something unconventional about what they were saving, perhaps because I was listening through my newlywed ears. Was there more I needed to know to pull the two of its together?

Marriage is not just about two people getting together. My wife and I married; we became a part of each other's lives; her family, her friends, her career, all of that had an impact on our relationship. And it's important you realise this and be ready to accept the change that your partner will bring to your life.

We were fixated on changing each other and that if we were ever going to have a successful marriage and raise our children in a health- environment, we'd first have to accept each other for who we were.

My wife and I didn't go to a counsellor, but I did Google "premarital counselling" once and found a few questionnaires that we later went through. I was shocked to find out how many children she wanted to have. However, I did find it helpful for us to discuss the differences we had on topics like saving for retirement and the type of education we wanted for our children. In the end, we settled on two or three kids and those we would spend a year settling in before we started planning their arrival. Afterwards, I felt like we had grown closer together.

If that's not enough of a Hallmark moment, I'll end with a few more happy clichés, when I asked my friends what the best part of being married was got themselves a companion and a soul mate for life.

Having someone who knows you totally and whom you can entirely confide in and share your dreams with.