Hi everyone! My name is Amanda and I blog over at Love and Coffee Mugs about my husband, our lives, my obsession with coffee, and just anything else that stumbles through my head. It’s basically a place for my word vomit and the ridiculous amount of pictures I take. Melissa was kind enough to let me take over for the day while she’s off enjoying what I’m sure is an incredibly beautiful honeymoon. So let’s talk about marriage a little bit. I haven’t been married for very long but I’ve learned one very important lesson that I believe is worth sharing.
When Will and I were still dating, we’d lay on the couch at night cuddling and watching t.v. I never told Will about this but while we were cuddling, I used to pretend that it was years down the road and we were married. That it was our couch and our house and we would have to get into bed soon in order to get up early for our jobs. Imagining this always gave me a very overwhelming sense of peace and happiness. I seriously could not wait to marry him.
So imagine my surprise when we got home from the honeymoon and were trying to settle into our house and we learned that marriage is not easy. Shocker, right? I’m sure you’ve heard people say that the first year of marriage is the hardest. They’re not kidding. Being married is not always rainbows and sunshine and sleepovers every night with your best friend. Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely awesome a majority of the time but there are some adjustments to figure out.
I don’t want to go into detail about the problems that arose during the first few months after our wedding, but we did our fair share of fighting and heart-to-hearts to try and resolve the problems. Sometimes we felt like we had a deadline to fix all our issues because four months after we said “I do”, Will left for basic training to join the Air Force. We knew we weren’t going to be able to really talk for 2 months. The looming “deadline” only added unnecessary stress and by the time his leave date arrived, of course, the issues weren’t resolved. We basically swept them under the rug and pretended everything was okay to make an unpleasant situation as pleasant as possible.
While we were apart during basic training, I missed him so much more than I thought I would. I didn’t even know it was possible to feel like you were missing an appendage while still retaining all your limbs, fingers, and toes. If you’ve ever experienced being separated from your spouse with very limited contact, you know how much it just sucks. It made every single thing we fought about or anything I whined about feel incredibly insignificant. Suddenly all our problems finally felt surmountable because working through issues with Will was better than not having him in my life at all.
There was only one problem. For some reason, I just assumed that because we missed each other so much, our problems were magically resolved. That the relief from being back together would erase all of them. And for awhile it did. We didn’t fight or argue for a couple months before the trouble slowly showed its ugly face again.
We realized that it didn’t matter how much we loved each other or how grateful we were to be back together, marriage will never be easy. We realized that just because it was so easy to love each other didn’t mean it was easy to make this marriage and partnership work. They’re totally not the same thing. Probably a no-brainer to everyone else, but we learned we have to consistantly try to communicate better and consider each other’s feelings more among several other things. The difference now is that we use our basic training experience and future deployments as a reminder that no matter how hard it may feel to work through a problem, it’s better than not having each other around at all and it’s worth every argument to be married to your best friend.
So come on over, say hi, and follow along while Will and I continue to figure out this whole marriage things.
