Married Musings

Google "marriage memes," I dare you. This came up about halfway through the page. It's not wrong. 

My best friend told me her husband of over a decade says that marriage is likely to consist of a lot of bad years and he wants to conquer those to get to the good ones. I kind of like that idea. No, I LOVE that idea. Why? Because marriage is hard.

Marriage not an easy thing. It can be painful, frustrating, infuriating, defeating and completely stressful.

Princess Bride, in its infinite wisdom, is quoted too often in my marriage. Things can be less romantic and more routine, then turn to rough and real in a moment's notice. It's all a matter of give and take, and communication.

We are 6 weeks away from 10 years of marriage and all I can say is, we've had our fair share of bad times and I'm all for pushing towards the good. Anyone who is married and says they don't have a phase like this might be lying or better yet, inhuman.

Marriage, like childbearing, is a club we all want to be accepted into, but no one tells you how challenging it is once you're in. No one is honest about it, until you're honest about your marriage with everyone else. That's when all the stories come out of the woodwork.

It took me a good 4 years of motherhood and family life rough waters to realize that most relationships have the "Titanic" moment of one person on the door and the other person in the water hanging for dear life. 

We can all admit now, there was room for both of them on that door! Regardless, I digress; marriage is anything but simple and easy. I now understand the growing divorce rate in our country. We often wonder how people make it for so long, and I'm unsure as if anyone has a magic answer, I sure as hell don't. I just know that it takes work from both parties.

Staying hopeful in a marriage, to me, is more important than staying happy. "Happy" can have a million definitions, but hopeful is the real, deep stuff. You're going to be horrible to each other. You're going to hurt each other. These are facts. But when you just want to keep up the good fight at the end of the day, and still annoy just that one other person, I think you're probably doing okay.

I used to find comfort in comedies that made fun of how ridiculous marriage can be and brought some lighthearted moments into it all. I still do, which is why I revisit these in times of high anxiety.

Of course the Friends moment the day after Monica and Chandler's wedding where Chandler fakes wedding photos at another wedding to avoid Monica being upset their photos were lost and Monica opens every gift without him will always live in infamy: 

Compromise at it's best; makes me laugh every time.

Albeit there are cute Lily and Marshall-esque moments: 

    

Those are the moments that get you out of the bad, more often than not. The moments where you stop being cranky at each other and stick with being cute. These are the social media moments people live for.

However, there are also some pretty serious moments when things get real:

We totally embrace and thrive in therapy and I make no apologies for it. I advocate therapy to EVERYONE. Sometimes you just need a little extra help so you can get away from the tension and back to life as a couple. It's like having a mediator to get you away from the same fight, the same dizzy dance and same bad habits, and recenter your views. I'm a fan.

More and more I'm finding as we age separately and as a couple, that we are just not alone in our issues, but no one is talking about it. In some ways, keeping your personal life personal is great, but sometimes it's nice to know the cheese doesn't stand alone.

My balance become being a complainer in general, and learning to cultivate my frustration with my tribe has been such an intense experience. At my worst I was just on a diatribe. At my best, I grew up and started to take control of what I wanted out of my marriage and stopped apologizing and started working towards those goals. It's definitely a work in progress, but it's worth the job!

We are 6 weeks away from celebrating the big 10 together and for the first time, in a long time, I'm feeling beyond hopeful, but excited. As strange as it is to think about the time gone by I'm definitely happy to put some chapters behind us and to continue onward and upward. 

Thanks Michael Scott, we won't!