Don’t roll your eyes yet… I’m not claiming to be a marriage expert after six months, I’m just sharing my takeaways and learning points so far:
2. How hard it is to resist the urge to fight my spouse’s battles. I now have a taste of what it means to be a protective mama bear. Whenever I feel like Delyn is being treated unfairly I want jump to his defense. But I can’t. Because it’s not my job to fight his battles for him. Similarly, he gets very protective when I tell him stories where I feel mistreated. We have to remind each other that it is okay to feel righteous anger, but that it does not necessarily help to escalate the situation. We try to be sounding boards for each other, remain as neutral as possible, offer logical advice, and extend encouragement, while not adding too much fuel to the fire. Easier said than done, right?! Now, I do believe that there are exceptions… there are certainly cases where I believe it would be appropriate for my husband to come to my defense… but for the most part I don’t need him to, most of the time I just need to cry or vent about a tough situation and be reminded that everything will be okay.
3. The realization I have a lot of opinions. As in… if I shared my opinions as often with my friends as I do with my spouse, I probably wouldn’t have very many friends left. Seriously. I don’t even consider myself to “nag”, but geez… there are some days where I stop and realize how particular I can be—how to fold laundry, what decorations to hang in the guest room, which type of milk to buy. Not to mention how I feel about social/political issues, how I deal with conflict, where I stand on spiritual matters. I don’t like feeling like I always have to be right. That’s a big deal in marriage. Because I also don’t like the feeling of losing or winning an argument—they both feel like losing. I’ve quickly realized that there is more than one way to do LOTS of things, there’s more than one way to think about LOTS of things, and there’s more than one way to handle LOTS of things.
More important than the content of the conversation is the respect involved. I’ve found that the little things like milk and laundry really don’t matter—we can afford to compromise on 1% (even though I prefer skim, and he’d drink whole milk if he could). But when tension rises with conversations about whether or not we agree on how to handle finances or how we will raise our future children, we both just want to feel heard, respected, and trust that our opinion will be considered and not disregarded.
4. Deciding that I’m not ready for kids after all. Anyone who knows me knows that I love kids. Delyn has always stressed the need for us to take a few years without kids and experience life and marriage just the two of us. I always thought he would change his mind once we got married, and decide he wanted kids pretty quickly. Quite the opposite. I can’t even imagine having kids just yet. Especially with my work schedule, I’m just not ready and I always seem to be exhausted. We’d love to move into a home within the next year or so. We really like having free time on the weekends. We are hoping to travel to Oregon for Thanksgiving (trying to make it official by writing it). We are kind of soaking up the freedom that we have now, limited as it might be, and not rush or pressure ourselves into anything we aren’t quite ready for. Someday we will be parents! I know that much.
5. Finding we’re not the only ones who need time to adjust. I never really considered that our marriage could affect other people. But we’ve learned that our friends and family need to adjust to this change to a certain degree, depending on the nature of the relationship. The reality is that our marriage is now our focus, and even though we still prioritize our friendships it takes a good deal of adjustment on all ends. There are certain friends and family members who are used to hearing from us all the time who haven’t had that same relationship for the past six months. Our families obviously have to adjust to splitting holidays and how often we’re able to visit (based on our work schedules and time off allowances) that factor in two people instead of one. Our families have been very understanding; my mom always makes a point to tell us that she will be thankful for any amount of time she gets with us. But we’ve learned to be more understanding that all of our friendships are different, and that we have to treat them differently based on their needs and their adjustment factors.
6. That accountability is the real deal. Have you ever had a friend who you’ve offered advice to and they don’t take it? And then the situation backfires on them? You kind of have an “I-told-you-so” moment, but generally their situation doesn’t affect you the same way it affects them. Not the case in marriage. When your spouse messes up or does something silly, you generally both feel the consequences. This has taught us that we have to be very direct with each other in how we feel about situations, especially when it comes to how to best handle them. Approaching your spouse when you believe they might be in the wrong can be really difficult. It takes a lot of grace and a lot of boldness to speak truth into their situation while trusting that they will receive it well. We’ve encountered situations where it sometimes feels like we are “parenting” the other, which is so far from our intentions—treating your spouse this way can feel very belittling. But we’ve never walked away from the situation without coming full circle and understanding that the other was simply trying to speak wisdom or truth into the circumstances. We keep each other accountable because it is our responsibility to them and to God. We believe that sometimes conviction and wisdom come in the form of the Holy Spirit using your spouse as the vehicle for delivery—we have to be bold to be the mouthpiece for righteousness.
7. Realizing I’m not as good at communicating as I thought I was. I have pretty high confidence in my ability to communicate. But Delyn reminds me sometimes that I’m just not as open as I think I am, and that just because I am articulate doesn’t mean that I am articulating all the thoughts in my head. Valid point. I’m more of a writer, and I know that. But I’ve found that oftentimes, disappointment comes from not vocalizing my expectations. When reality doesn’t meet those internal expectations I tend to get upset, and it doesn’t make any sense to my husband. I can’t spend an hour upset that he wore his blue shirt to Christmas dinner if I didn’t tell him that I really hoped he’d wear his green one. I’m learning that it’s my responsibility to be more vocal, otherwise it’s not fair for me to feel disappointed, frustrated or upset.
8. That I still get lonely sometimes. Did anybody else expect loneliness to go away when they got married? I mean, to a degree, I did. For goodness sake, I share a room with someone. How do you even have privacy to feel loneliness when there is someone right next to you? What I’ve learned is that loneliness can have different forms. Right now I’m really missing my friends and my family! It doesn’t mean I’m depressed 24/7, it just means that there are times that I feel a strong urge to call my best friend in Texas and talk for an hour. There are things that I can talk to my girlfriends about that I don’t talk to my husband about—for example, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
9. How confident I feel that time apart is healthy. Other things that are healthy? King size beds. Seriously. Best investment we’ve made. I am big on personal space, and there just wasn’t enough room for personal space to exist in a queen size bed. I’m sorry. It’s just how I feel. Now regarding time apart: I’m not ashamed of the fact that I feel strongly that we need time apart to regroup. It could be 15 minutes, it could be longer—I just need time to decompress. I’ve never spent this much time with ANY of my friends because I think we would drive each other bananas, so why would I expect any different from my husband? Going for a run, doing a workout video, watching my favorite TV show, going to Hobby Lobby, all of these things remind me that I have my own interests and that it’s okay to take some time to do what I like to do sometimes!
10. That I'd chose reality over expectations. While we both had a lot of preconceived notions about what marriage would look like, life never seems to look the way we think it will look. Sometimes life is harder, but sometimes it is immeasurably greater than we ever expected. We are learning a LOT about expectation vs. reality, but the bottom line is that some of the best times I've had in the past six months have been the unplanned, unexpected ones. We're learning to take away expectations and pressure and in exchange for the freedom to enjoy the little moments. Because when you love someone this much, even the mundane can be beautiful when you're together.