Tomorrow Mitch and I are lucky enough to celebrate eight years of marriage.
I’ve heard that the first seven years of marriage are always the hardest. That’s when you figure out all your power struggles whether it be with money, children (if you chose to have them) who takes out the trash, who cleans what and when, figuring out if you can donate your spouse’s time to a project without consulting with them first, the list could go on and on. That’s just the struggles I can come up with in five seconds. I’m quite sure that the lists could go on for days given some serious time to stop and think. Struggles in the beginning are just a way of life with your chosen loved one. The way I see it is that if you’re happier with them more than 50% of the time then continue to try your best and stick it out. Open and honest communication with your loved one is a MUST! Love may be blind, but marriage can be a REAL eye opener!
I can honestly say after seven full years of marriage I still LIKE Mitch. Like is a big thing if you stop and think about it. You can love someone, like your family members, but it’s a whole other ball of wax to really like them. When you love and like someone you’ve really got something there. Like helps you get through the small stuff, love gets you through the big stuff. If you look at the big picture, it’s almost always small stuff.
You see everywhere that you need to marry your best friend. Mitch would be my best guy friend. He’s my friend, he’s my cheerleader, he’s my go to, he’s my support system, and he’s my equal partner in raising our children. I won’t lie and say that we’ve had the perfect marriage. I not real sure such a thing exists. We’ve had our tough times and we’ve survived to become a smarter more compassionate couple. We’ve learned a lot about who we are individually and together and why we work. I’ve learned that we work because we honestly try. We work because we do our best to grow together.
I’ve read plenty of articles about why marriages fail and about expectations when you go into a marriage. How men marry woman because they like who they are at the time and woman marry men because of the potential they believe they have for the future. I’ve also seen marriages fail because people don’t want to try anymore. It’s sometimes easier to go out and find someone shiny and new who loves the “you” that you are at that moment. Instead, they don’t try and work within the parameters of the marriage that they were in because it’s harder. You know the old saying that, “Life is hard,” well it’s true for a reason.
My parents always told me that marriage is something you have to work at, and grow at together. My mother used the analogy of two oxen pulling a cart. If one Ox doesn’t pull and slacks off it creates an offset in the way the work is distributed. If the oxen pull together, as a team, it lightens the load for its partner. Both oxen pulling at 100% lightens the burden of any load. The same holds true for marriage. Another bit of sage advice that I heard and liked was that, “One of you can only be crazy at a time.” I liked this because it’s SO true, and, “Never yell at each other unless the house is on fire.” I laughed, but I liked it none the less. Mitch and I don’t yell at each other, we have “discussions.” Yelling involves swearing. That’s my rule. If you don’t swear then it’s just a discussion, sometimes heated, but a discussion none the less. And we’ve made it a point that we can have serious discussions in front of our children. We don’t protect them from the everyday ups and downs of our marriage. I want my girls to realize that marriage is not what they see in Disney movies or on TV. That marriage is work. They also get to see the great points in our marriage too! We don’t stop dancing in the kitchen because the girls are around. I pray every night, that if my girls choose to get married, that they find someone as AWESOME as their dad. I'm glad he gives them a good standard to hold the their partners too in the future. I wish for my daughters a marriage as good as ours, not better, but as good.
Mitch and I have grown together over the last seven years. We’ve struggled, but we’ve grown in the same direction. THAT is the key to our success. Growing in the same direction takes being PRESENT in your relationship. In today’s world of smart phones, the intranet, cable TV with like a bazillion channels, friends, work, and anything else that strikes your fancy it’s really easy to become less present. Trust me, some days all I want is to be alone, by myself, to do whatever I want whenever I want. Find a partner that lets you DO those things for your sanity. Mitch and I have figured out a way to give each other the space that we need, and to still be present as a husband and wife, along with being full time parents too. It’s hard to find the time, but you have to find it, you have to make it a priority or you’ll lose what you have worked so hard to create.
I look back on the last fifteen years that I’ve known Mitch. Boy we’ve changed a lot. He’s changed me and I’ve changed him; most of the time we’ve changed together for the better. He’s my filter, I’m his open communication. He’s my lazy days on the couch, and I’m his get up and go. He’s my Blake Shelton and God only knows what I am to him in that department…maybe his Miranda Lambert?! 0.o He doesn’t listen much to Country. Needless to say, I think we’ve finally found our stride and right on time, three kids later. No family is perfect and we may not have it all together, but together we just might have it all.
Dedicated to Mitch!
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