My husband Dan and I hit the 12 year mark of being married in May. Our anniversary happened to fall on Mother's Day, and a busy Sunday for church things, and the day before I left for a week of reserve duty. In other words, it was just an ordinary day, pretty typical for us in this stage of life. My mother offered to watch the kids earlier that week, and I honestly cannot remember what Dan and I did – – probably crashed on the couch, and went to sleep by 9 PM.
Each anniversary now seems somehow more significant and less significant all at the same time. We do not celebrate each passing year with much fanfare, but I suppose we never really did. Yet with each year that we have under our belts, there is a sense of accomplishment, of security. We are doing this. We are building our lives together. We met at age 18, so that means we are approaching the milestone when we will have known each other for as long as we have not known each other. We will have known our lives together more than we will have known our lives apart.
Even if the newness of marriage has worn off, and even if the marriage feels less precarious, I know all too well that marriage always takes work. Many of you who are reading this have been married two, three, or four times as long as I have, and I cannot pretend to know all that goes into staying (happily) married. I love asking long-married couples about their secrets, and answers are as varied as the partners. I have heard everything from separate vacations (my dad’s answer) to never going to bed angry to going to bed angry and handling the argument after a good night’s sleep. There is no one tried-and-true secret.
Marriage can never be taken for granted. There is no such thing as coasting. I do believe that in certain seasons marriage feels much more difficult than another seasons, and I may jinx myself for saying this, but I do think we are in one of the easier seasons. We have navigated some huge life shifts – – parents’ deaths, adding children to the family, deployment, big moves, job changes – – and we have found steady ground, at least for the time being. From watching others’ marriages from up close and afar, I know that could all change in an instant. It just takes a cancer diagnosis. A terrible accident. A mental health scare. A new job offer.
I have read many a marriage advice book for my work as a priest and Air Force chaplain, and they all take a slightly different angle, but if I had to pull out two common themes that underpin them all I would say that happy, successful marriages take mutual respect and a growth mindset. Most other principles fall under those two general ideas. It is hard to get along if you do not respect one another, and it is hard to stay married if you do not allow for growth and change.
As I reflect on the past twelve years, I see how much Dan and I have grown together. I do not believe marriage completes me, or that I would be any less of a whole person if I were unmarried. My marriage is a gift for which I am immensely grateful, and it has fundamentally changed my life’s trajectory. I have become more a product of Dan’s influence on me and vice versa—and I do not mean in an unhealthy codependent way, just in a we-have-really-melded-our-lives-together way. We are not the same people we were when we first married. We are not the same people we were five years ago or even a year ago. If I wanted the exact same person I married, I do not have him anymore, and I am glad for that. It can be scary not to know who the other is becoming, but that is part of the ride we signed up for when we chose marriage. For the most part (wrinkles aside—wink, wink), I think these changes have been good.
Even though we have changed, our arguments haven’t. We return to the same arguments over and over again. Truly. These arguments do not usually find fixes either. Neither person “wins.” We still get frustrated. I still want to spend more money on throw pillows and home decor than Dan does, and we still will disagree about the relative distribution of household labor. However, we have learned to fight and move on quicker. Gone are the days when we had half-day battles (Maybe some of this is a result of having children?). Now we say our piece and sulk and/or yell for about 15 minutes and name the stalemate.
Finally, this one I did not see coming. We are each other’s best friend. Some people have strong feelings about this: that married partners should not be each other’s best friends. I understand the impulse behind this perspective. Married people cannot be each other’s everything. It is healthy and important to have other relationships. But as we have grown together over the years, my husband is the first person I turn to for advice, for comfort, or to vent. He is the one who knows about my day-to-day. He knows me better than anyone else, and the same is true about him for me. I know him better than anyone else. The relative time and energy we spend with and on each other far exceeds what we give to our friends, at least in this phase of life, and I am okay with that. I love my friends, but when all is said and done, my grave will be next to Dan’s.
Tell me: what has surprised you about marriage, either about your own or what you have witnessed in someone else’s? Do you have any “secrets”?
Adam and I just celebrated our 28th anniversary. We are also best friends, I can't imagine it being otherwise. When I was younger I naively thought that once a couple had been married say ten years or so, they could be confident of a marriage that could not fail. When our marriage hit some serious bumps after 20 years, I was shocked! How could this happen? What was it that we hadn't yet worked out after all this time? I'm blessed that we were able to work through our difficulties, and in the process our marriage has only become stronger. If I were to call on one idea for a happy marriage, it would humility. Humility is necessary for us to be able to set our "ego stories" aside in order to truly hear and hold space for our spouse, to respect their experience. Humility helps us to avoid getting caught up in judgements of good/bad, right/wrong, when we disagree. We all want to be truly seen, heard, valued. It's important to keep doing that for each other.