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I have seen DH do those things, like drink from the milk carton, and I still love him the same! I don't think there is so much a decline, but rather a comfort. You know the person so well inside and out. You aren't on that "high" of newlywed-ness, and maybe no longer make a point to always hold hands, or kiss before you leave. I would call it comfort, not decline.

I think those things (drink from milk carton, forgetting to take out the trash, etc.) affect couples who didn't live together before marriage. We are getting married in September and have been living together since June 2010. I know that sometimes DH leaves his socks on the floor. I use to get mad about it, but every minute that I spend being pissed at him takes away 60 seconds that I could have been happy with him. So I choose my battles. The world isn't going to end if his socks on the floor and 9/10 now when he sees me going for them, he gets up and grabs them before I even get to.
I think some marriages decline because they take each other for granted maybe? Men stop being romantic because they already got the girl and women stop dressing up because well...why shave anything when you don't have anyone to impress?
I think couples should make an attempt to be in dating mode once in a while.

When I was taking a family psych class we studied divorce and my professor showed us a graph. The rate was pretty low for years one and two and then rose a bit for year three. It went back down for years four and five and then on year six it started to climb. It peaked at year nine and then declined sharply with another small peak around year 20. I told my husband that if we can make it through the first nine years we can make it through anything.

We have been together for 10.5 years (married for 2.2). Around the 6 year mark we had some real growing pains and even considered separating. It was rough, but we knew that our relationship was worth fighting for. A year and a half later, we were engaged.

I would say that the quality of our relationship has actually improved over time. It is certainly different, though. Like @skibobrown said, there's less "passion" than there was 10 years ago but there's a deeper love, commitment to each other, and team approach to life. We're best friends. We'll see how we do with a baby in the mix!

We’ve only been married for 1.5 years (but together for 5.5), but our relationship definitely has not deteriorated over time. I think part of the reason is there were no rose colored glasses worn when we got married. We got married because we wanted to, not because we needed to for any reason. Like Miss.Adia said, we lived together before marriage for several years, so we went into marriage knowing exactly what the others’ personal habits are, and obviously being ok with those. We also had each dated seriously before, living with other partners – so there was no false expectation about what “living together” means. We didn’t get married thinking “gee, X annoys me, but I’m sure he’ll change after we’re married”, because people don’t just change.

Our relationship has evolved over the years, but we really are best friends, as well as in love, which I think is really important. I like my husband immensely, besides loving him. We’re both committed to keeping our relationship at the forefront and not losing it to becoming just “parents” together. I think that’s important too - to keep maintaining and working on your marriage, not just your new role as parents.

I wonder what it's like for people who lived together for a while before getting married.. does it happen earlier into the marriage? I've been married to DH for 1.5 years and there has been no decline quite yet.

We've been together for 7 years, married a little over 2 of them. We've had a few rough patches over the years. I think since getting married, our relationship has become stronger than before. For the longest time, it felt like we had to defend our relationship from some negative outside forces who happen to be family and friends.

Once we got engaged, we declared our commitment to each other and made it clear that this was the real deal. Since then, we've learned to vacation for ourselves and focus on us. Marriage really brought focus to our relationship. At times, we're boring and homebodies, but the quality's never been better. We quieted the family and friends who didn't take us seriously or who openly campaigned for us to break up.

Just wanted to note that Rob Sr. and I lived together for 2 years before marriage (shh, don't tell our parents! and I think our toughest times so far for our relationship have been after marriage, year 3 and year 5. Of course those little squabbles about housekeeping and stuff come up, but that's just married life. Most of the major arguments have been about family, and a few about money (but not really... it's mostly that when we're struggling about money, it makes everything more tense and arguments blow up more easily). Even though we lived together for a while before marriage, none of our arguments were seriously major until after several years of marriage. We get along so well and are definitely best friends, so big issues didn't really come up until things like family and priorities came up.

I worry about year 7 coming up, but like everything, I think if you prepare yourselves for what's to come and calmly discuss things you're afraid of, getting through those inevitable tough patches is possible. Lots of people have told me to not mention or discuss divorce. We find that in some moments, discussing it and what we're afraid of actually helps.

Is there no one else past year 4 of marriage??? haha.