The Truth About Marriage

This weekend my husband and I will be celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary.  In some ways, I feel like we just got married yesterday. In other ways, I feel like we’ve been together forever.  It’s hard to remember my life before we got together.  I don’t typically like to get too personal with my blog posts, but since May is our anniversary month, I wanted to share a post on marriage.  I’m not an expert on this topic, so it makes me a little nervous to talk about, but I’m not really an expert on anything I post on this blog, so I figured I’d go ahead and post it anyway.  Besides, it’s a perfect excuse to share some of my favorite wedding pictures.  

When I met my husband, we were 21 and in college.  He was in a fraternity and I was in a sorority.  Back then I wasn’t thinking about marriage.  I knew I wanted to get married one day, but at that point in my life, I was more concerned with having fun with my friends and marriage seemed so far in the future.  We hung around in the same crowd for most of college, but it wasn’t until after Kevin graduated college that I had any interest in dating him.  He had gotten a job at the university as a flight instructor, and I started to see him out and about more and more.  One thing led to another and before I knew it we were seriously dating.  Things just seemed to fall into place with us.  It wasn’t like my other college relationships where I was wondering what was going on with us or waiting around for a phone call.  Things just seemed so natural with us.  It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to get married.  After 2 years of dating, Kevin purposed to me.  A year later we married.  

Now it’s been 10 years of being together and I couldn’t imagine my life without him.  He is such a huge part of my life.  He’s my best friend.  I think of all the things we have done together and the goals we have accomplished.  It makes me so proud.  We’ve both grown a lot in the last 10 years.  Now after 7 years of being married, I feel like I have a better understanding of marriage.  I’m still learning, but I’m a little older and wiser.  So here is the truth about marriage from what I’ve learned so far. 

That’s kind of a given, but I really don’t think that this hits you until after you say I do.  At least for me, I knew the commitment that I was making, but I didn’t really think about this that deeply.  Forever is a long time and things might change, but you learn to grow together.  My husband and I have changed a lot in 10 years.  Our relationship together started out in a frat house at a party, now we are parents together and one day we will be retired and hopefully be grandparents.  I look forward to all those things and I look forward to doing them with him.  I know that I can only have that if we work together to make the future happened.  

It’s never good to compare your marriage to other’s, because we are all different.  No one has the perfect marriage, even if they look like they do on social media, they don’t.  Sadly I think a lot of marriages fail because they think “the grass is always greener on the other side”.  I always say that contentment is the key to happiness.  It’s a hard thing to accomplish, but if you are content with your marriage you will be happy.   

They say opposites attract and in my case that is so true.  My husband and I are so different from each other.  He is a logical thinker and see’s everything in black and white.  I’m emotional and see everything in grey.  Sometimes we disagree and it’s not always pretty, but that’s okay.  It wouldn’t seem right if we agreed on everything.  Sometimes you need to fight and get things out.  No matter how different we are, we always have one thing in common and that is our love for each other.

You can’t be selfish
I’ll admit it, I’m a selfish person at times.  I like to do what I want, but when you’re married you can’t be that way.  You have to make compromises.  It’s not always easy, but sometimes you learn that things turn out for the best when you find a common ground.

Have a plan/ set goals together
I married a planner.  He plans everything and he’s never disappointed me.  It’s important to sit down and talk about your future together.  You need to talk about your financial goals, your family goals and your career goals.  The best thing in our relationship has been the open and honest communication about our future together.  They say life is what happens when you’re making plans, but that’s why the plans are always changing to keep up with your life.  

Like I said before, I’m not an expert on marriage.  My marriage is a work in progress.  It’s not perfect, but it is beautiful.  I wouldn’t want to go through this life with anyone else.