This article explores modern marriage expectations vs reality, how media influences our view of love, and what truly creates healthy long-term partnership.

By Danielle Roxborough, LMFT — Love Is A Verb Counseling

Most of us walked into marriage believing we were disappointed because we chose wrong, or because something was broken in the relationship, couples are feeling dissatisfied. There are many marriage myths that have added to this feeling that marriage is not all it was cut out as, especially if we were subject to heavy marriage media at a young age such as, Disney marriage expectations or "happily ever after," or 90's romcom relationship myths...

But the longer I work with couples — especially adults in their 30s and 40s — the more obvious it becomes:

**You’re not failing at marriage. You’re recovering from the story you were sold about marriage.**

And that story was crafted by Disney, romantic comedies, sitcoms like Friends, and a capitalist culture built on selling you a version of love that doesn’t actually exist.

Note, I am not anti-capitalist by any stretch but I wanted to share how our culture monitizes and conceptualizes relationships. By reflecting on cultural expectations, norms, and media structure we can begin to understand how we operate, and begin to make mindful choices based in our own values.

Modern Relationship Expectations vs Reality:

Let’s talk honestly about what modern marriage really looks like — and why so many partners feel let down, overwhelmed, or confused by their own emotional expectations.

1. The “Happily Ever After” Lie — and Who It Was Designed to Benefit

Disney didn’t just give us fairytales. They gave us scripts.

Scripts that taught women to wait, and men to rescue. Scripts that taught love as a climax, not a collaboration. Scripts that taught marriage as an ending, not a beginning.

But behind the fantasy was a quiet agenda:

**Love and marriage were marketed like products.

Intensity → pursuit → reward → purchase → happily ever after.**

And we absorbed this before we ever had a chance to question it.

2. How Disney & Media Coded Gender Roles Into Us

Women learned:

• Your worth = being chosen.

• A good partner intuitively knows your needs.

• Men will automatically provide, protect, attune, pursue.

• Once he chooses you, you’ll feel emotionally safe and connected forever.

Men learned:

• Your worth = providing and performing.

• Emotional expression is weakness; competence is everything.

• A woman will naturally handle the domestic and emotional labor.

• You “win” the girl, and the relationship stabilizes itself.

These messages weren’t always overt. They were occasionally subliminal. And they shaped our expectations long before we entered our first relationship.

3. How This Conditioning Is Fueling Modern Divorce Rates: Dissatisfaction

Women today are divorcing at higher rates than ever — especially in midlife. And what they’re reporting is shockingly consistent:

**“I felt alone in my marriage.”

“I expected partnership but got parenting.”

“I needed emotional availability, not just presence.”

“I was managing the relationship on my own.”**

Women expected:

✔ emotional attunement

✔ shared household labor

✔ support with parenting

✔ connection and communication

✔ partnership, not patriarchy

But men were conditioned to expect:

✔ she will handle the home

✔ she will manage the relationship

✔ she will soothe emotional tension

✔ she will be the emotional center of the family

✔ she will mother the marriage

Not because men are uncaring—but because they were trained to believe this was normal.

Meanwhile, women no longer depend financially on marriage for survival.They are educated, employed, capable, and self-sufficient.

When the emotional and domestic load is not shared, divorce is not a failure.It’s a boundary.

4. The Friends Example: How Sitcom Love Made Drama Feel Like Chemistry

unrealistic marriage expectations

Let’s talk about Friends — a show beloved by millennials and Gen X, but one that encoded deeply unrealistic expectations.

Ross and Rachel

• On-again, off-again intensity.

• Jealousy portrayed as devotion.

• Emotional unavailability framed as passion.

• Constant chasing → dopamine cycle → “meant to be.”

This wasn’t love.It was addictive attachment chemistry dressed as romance.

Monica and Chandler

Even the “stable couple” modeled:

• Monica carrying almost all emotional labor

• Chandler shutting down during stress

• Monica planning every family ritual, chore system, holiday

• Chandler relying on humor instead of vulnerability

  
  

Everyone laughs, but this is exactly what couples describe in therapy.

Hollywood made these patterns look charming. In reality, they are exhausting.

And when you grow up on this, you enter marriage expecting the emotional intensity of Ross & Rachel combined with the domestic competency of Monica —a combination no one can deliver.

5. The Addiction Trap: Why We Mistake the Dopamine High of Early Love for “True Love”

This is the part no movie teaches you:

Early love is intoxicating because it’s neurological.

Not magical.

The brain releases:

• dopamine (anticipation, reward)

• norepinephrine (excitement, obsession)

• oxytocin (bonding)

• endorphins (euphoria)

This is why the early stages feel addictive.You’re not imagining it — you’re chemically flooded.

But long-term love is a different neurological system:

• safety

• stability

• trust

• co-regulation

• calm connection

It’s less fireworks, more fireplace.

The problem?

We were trained to believe the fireworks were the relationship. And the fireplace meant something was wrong.

6. What Healthy Marriage ACTUALLY Looks Like (Based on Real Research)

Not Disney marriage myths. Not rom-coms. Not sitcoms.

Real marriage — according to Gottman, attachment science, and modern psychology — looks like:

✔ 80% calm connection, 20% conflict

(It’s the repair that matters.)

✔ Shared emotional labor

Both partners attune, communicate, and respond to needs.

✔ Shared domestic labor

Not helping — co-owning.

✔ Vulnerability from both partners

Men included.

✔ Positive sentiment override

Small moments of affection outweigh negative interactions.

✔ Turning toward bids for connection

Responding when your partner reaches for affection, attention, or support.

✔ Acceptance of differences

Instead of trying to change each other.

✔ Variation in connection

Long-term love isn’t static — it flows between closeness, distance, repair, intimacy, and everyday teamwork.

✔ Emotional safety

The foundation of desire, trust, and long-term intimacy.

A healthy marriage is not thrilling every day. It’s steady. Predictable. Emotionally grounding.

And that stability is what actually allows intimacy to deepen.

7. What Men & Women Are Actually Feeling in Today’s Marriages

Women are feeling:

• let down

• unseen

• emotionally overextended

• lonely while partnered

• tired of carrying the invisible load

• disappointed by the lack of attunement and partnership

Men are feeling:

• criticized

• inadequate

• unsure how to emotionally show up

• overwhelmed by expectations they were never taught

• confused about why their efforts aren't “enough”

• disconnected but not intentionally

And NONE of this means the marriage is doomed.

It means the conditioning failed you — not the relationship.

8. The Truth: Marriage Was Never Supposed to Be a Disney Ending — It Was Always a Daily Practice

The movies end right before the real relationship begins.

Long-term marriage is:

• continuous negotiation

• shared responsibility

• learning each other’s nervous systems

• forgiving, repairing, reconnecting

• choosing each other again and again

It is less “happily ever after” and more:

“We’re building something real, meaningful, honest, and sustainable.”

It’s not glamorous. But it’s real.

And real is what lasts.

9. If This Resonated — You’re Not Broken, You’re Human

Couples today are navigating expectations no previous generation had: two-working-parent households, emotional labor, trauma awareness, shifting gender roles, and attachment needs.

No one taught us how to do this.

But you can learn...

10. Esther Perel’s Perspective: Marriage Was Never Meant to Carry the Weight of All Our Human Needs

One of the most liberating — and often uncomfortable — truths about modern marriage comes from psychotherapist Esther Perel, whose research highlights something revolutionary:

No one partner can (or should) meet all of our relational, emotional, and identity needs.

For most of history, we lived in tribes, villages, multi-generational homes, and community webs where:

• Friendship was shared, not scheduled

• Emotional support was collective

• Child-raising was distributed

• Identity was rooted in group belonging

• Play and novelty came from the village, not one partner

Marriage wasn’t expected to be:

Soulmate + best friend + lover + therapist + co-parent + financial partner + emotional regulator + constant companion.

But modern culture — especially Disney, rom-coms, and nostalgic sitcoms — collapsed all relational needs into one person.

Which means many couples unknowingly enter marriage believing:

“You should be my everything.”

And that pressure is soul-crushing for both sides.

Perel argues that healthy marriage allows for “multiple pillars of connection,” including:

• Friends we can confide in

• Communities we feel rooted in

• Creative or intellectual outlets

• Mentors and support systems

• Family bonds or chosen family

• Shared social circles, separate social circles

• Connection outside the marriage that feeds the self

Not to replace the marriage —but to resource it.

When we rely on one relationship to meet every emotional need, the relationship suffocates under the weight of expectation.When we have varied sources of connection, the marriage breathes again.

Perel calls this relational diversification. It is not disloyal — it is protective.

It keeps love from becoming a cage.

Because when the marriage is the only source of connection...

❗ every disagreement feels high-stakes

❗ every unmet need becomes personal failure

❗ intimacy becomes pressure instead of play

❗ desire becomes obligation instead of curiosity

❗ the relationship becomes survival instead of sanctuary

But when connection can flow in and out of the marriage, something shifts:

Individuals feel fuller.The relationship feels lighter.Desire rekindles because there's oxygen, not demand.

Marriage grows when each partner has a life beyond it.

Healthy long-term partnership doesn’t ask us to fuse — it asks us to stay whole.

Not separate, not distant —but two supported individuals choosing each other, not needing each other to be everything.

And that kind of marriage —with spaciousness, novelty, outside nourishment, and shared but not suffocating connection —is the marriage that actually lasts.

Because in Perel’s words:

A marriage fed by community, friendships, creativity, depth, and identity has room for both.

At Love Is A Verb Counseling, I help couples:

• break free from unrealistic cultural conditioning

• communicate with clarity instead of conflict

• share emotional and domestic labor more equitably

• rebuild connection and intimacy

• understand each other’s nervous systems

• create a partnership that feels fair, secure, and mutually supportive

👉 Love is not a fantasy — it’s a skill. And it’s one you can learn together.