Holy Moly Matrimony

When I said, “I do”, I didn’t know I applied and had been accepted for a job. Truth be told…marriage is work, straight and simple. I thought the lovey-dovey would last forever. I thought the twinkle in his eyes, the sexy in his voice, and all his silly jokes would always be cute to me.

Reality check! Three years in, the twinkle had lost its shine, the sexy lost its sexy, and the jokes became quite annoying. I wondered how so many people made it to ten and twenty years with a smile on their faces. Were they faking the funk? Were they just staying together for the children? Could they really be happy all those years?

I started longing for the weekly hangouts with my girlfriends and wanted him to find his fellas and roll with them sometimes. The whole togetherness thing was a tad overrated; it was just too much for me.

Now, ten years in, I see things in a different light. The reason the twinkle in his eyes seemed like it had dulled was because I had lost sight of why I’d married him. When I began re-examining myself as a wife, to find my role in the matter, I started hearing the sexy again. I realized that the key to a lot of our issues was our lack of communication. We were talking, in fact, we did that a lot. The problem was we were no longer communicating about things that really mattered to us as individuals or our dreams.

We had gotten used to mainly conversing about the children, work, my job search…you know…just surface stuff. I didn’t know my husband was interested in returning to school. He didn’t know that I was still very passionate about writing books and had begun working on my first. It frustrated me that a few of my close friends were interested enough about my life to know of this development, while if my husband cared, it would have come up in conversation.

I knew he had always been passionate about drawing and creating, but I thought the dream had died shortly after we’d gotten married. I didn’t know if given the opportunity, he’d still want to return to school.

Days, months, and years went by, and our marriage just seemed boring. There was nothing to really look forward to except soccer games and church, whenever he could make it with us. Something had to give. There was no way our marriage could survive the way we were.

Time and money weren’t on our side. If we continued the way we were going, it was only a matter of time before our marriage completely fell apart. Our finances became our biggest bone of contention, and we just couldn’t see eye-to-eye on even the simplest of things. We just weren’t the same people we’d been years before, and rather than grow together, we’d “grown apart”. I’d always wondered what that meant, but I finally understood. There were no ifs, ands, or buts; our marriage was crumbling, and we weren’t doing much to rectify things, other than complain.

We decided to seek Christian counseling. It was needed and well overdue. We could barely resolve  conflicts or come to reasonable agreements without being at each other’s throats. However, deep down, we still loved each other. After six to eight weeks of counseling, we each recognized our mistakes and decided our marriage was worth fighting for, worth working at, and it would not be easy but we finally decided to come together, be purposeful about spending time together. We had to work at it. 

We started really talking. We talked about EVERYTHING. We shared EVERYTHING. No more secrets or assumptions that the other didn’t care. It was like a full-time job, but one that I started enjoying again. It was like the dream job I’d always hoped for but still had its ups and downs I was willing to put up with, because I thoroughly and honestly loved what I did. In this case, my main job description is communicating in love and honesty and being there for my husband, as much as I can. It’s one heck of a job but it’s an amazing adventure.