I have been married to 15 years now and things are great! Friends and Family often comment about how little my husband and I argue and how great we are together. Of course reality is that things are not always wonderful and that Marriage takes work. You get what you put in.
I was asked by a single friend who is dealing with a hard break up just how my husband and I have managed to stay together. I don’t think I answered her very well at the time, a jumble of “don’t go to bed angry” and “forgive” and “we don’t believe in divorce” spilled out of me. I am not sure it was helpful.
I think you understand the first two, but let me explain the last. It isn’t that we don’t think there are good reasons for divorce, both our parents had divorces actually. We know that people change and sometimes people marry for the wrong reasons. We don’t not believe in Divorce because of religion even as I am very science minded. It is something we decided before we got married because we where making a choice to get married so young. We where clear that it was forever. It was blind faith in one another and in love. I saw what divorce did to my family and while everyone said it is better to get divorced then fight in front of the kids, it just didn’t feel right to me. As it turns out some research into divorce all these years later shows science supporting just how damaging divorce is. In short, for us it isn’t an option. This means we must work things out, we must put the work in to work things out. Knowing what isn’t an option and what is has us on the same page and it is really comforting in some ways.
Marriage is work though and with deployments and illness and 4 children it has been a challenge at times.
Work though can be play. Find what you love to do together and make time for it. My husband and I are grown up geeks, we love to game online together so we have online gaming dates. Cheap and we can be home with the kids. We love to talk about science and philosophy and we do that a lot when driving so sometimes we make an extra effort to take the long way and talk more. We love to dream of the future together and drives and long walks are great for that too. Of course a fun bedroom life helps as well! It can be hard when life gets hard, when money is tight or when things seem like they are falling apart but you need to connect and that has to be a priority. Remember what was fun and go for it. Things have changed and it is ok if some of those things you loved doing together no longer are loved but make the effort and find new things that are.
As for my husband and I, we are busy enjoying going out to the movies again. We spent about 13 years hardly ever seeing a movie but now that we have a dependable baby sitter we are getting out again and I am not even feeling guilty about going some place without our kids.
From my personal facebook wall tonight: Date night was great! Went to see Insidious 2 and half way through the movie a scary part made half the audience jump a bit but you hear this big guy a few rows in front of us say “Holy S***, F*** this, done with this.” Get up all scared and leave the theater and of course everybody laughed at the guy. He didn’t come back either! I don’t think his friends are ever going to let him live it down! Thanks for the Date Husband and here you thought a PG13 movie wouldn’t be any good!
It really was great and while it is 2am and I am on here blogging and my husband is next to be working on his computer networking research I know it will end great soon as we unwind from such a late movie. I love the weekends when we can be night owls together.
Take care of your marriage, and have fun!
