Marriage, or long-term relationships, seems increasingly old-fashioned. While I intellectually grasp why, I wish more people would speak out about what you miss when you throw away a relationship when it gets hard.
My wisdom about the subject doesn’t come from a degree, books I’ve read, or the latest social trends. Instead, it’s the result of remaining with the same person from my junior prom to the half-century mark and beyond.
Often, I hear things like, “You two are so lucky” or “Things were so different back then.” Both are true, but they leave out the hard work that continues to go into choosing to love the same person for most of your life.
We got married over Spring Break of my senior year of high school. Our wedding invitations became the theme of our marriage. On the front, they said, “On this day, I will marry my friend.” That is the one piece of advice I’ve given each of my children — marry your best friend. Though passion may come and go, and hard times will challenge every relationship, friendship endures.
He graduated from a technical college and landed his first grown-up job. Now that the youngest of my six kids is older than I was when we married, I can see we were babies, and I would have bet against us if I had the wisdom I have now. So, what’s the secret to making it last?
We Didn’t Stay Madly in Love
Everyone is familiar with the hormones and literal chemistry that drives new relationships. When my mom tried to tell me that one day that feeling would fade — I knew she’d obviously never been in love in the way I was in love. I recognize that arrogance now, but at the time, no one could convince me that I wouldn’t always feel the way I felt about him on our wedding day.
But, as is often true, Mom was right. Jobs, college, household chores, and the stress of being young and too immature for the life we were building took its toll.
We argued, yelled, and occasionally threw things. We threatened to quit, to walk away. But we both took our vows seriously, so we came back to each other and slowly learned to communicate without keeping score of right and wrong.
Then we had kids, and what had felt like stress before seemed trivial compared to the challenge of realizing you are responsible for keeping tiny humans alive. In addition to those basic needs, it was our job to teach, model, and mold them into decent human beings.
While figuring that out, we still had bills, jobs, and a house that needed to be kept livable. I worked days, and he worked nights to reduce daycare costs. We barely saw each other for a while, except to hand over kids and diaper bags and mumble instructions about who needed what as we passed each other coming and going.
It was hard to find time for an uninterrupted shower and impossible to find time for a passionate reconnection. When your children need you constantly while you also try to cook, clean, pay bills, and work, it’s common to get lazy about taking care of your spouse.
He did his part in all the above and worked long hours. We were both guilty of neglecting our marriage during that season.
When you’re in the trenches like that, it’s easy to fantasize about paths not taken. We loved each other, but it would be disingenuous to say that we were in love during that phase of our lives. Instead, it was more like survival mode, where you rely on your partner to do their part to keep the whole mess from imploding.
During this stage, something deeper, sweeter, and more durable than passion emerged. He was the one person in the world that loved these kids as much as I did. Whether it was having your breath taken away by some nugget of wisdom our toddler shared or the disproportionate worry of a late-night fever, there was one person I could count on caring as much as I did.
Maybe it was the day he parked at a train crossing and grabbed our two-year-old, who was obsessed with trains, out of the car to feel and hear the rumble as the train passed by, or maybe it was waking up to check on a sick baby, only to find him already there with Motrin in hand — but I fell in love again with the man who cared about diaper rash and insisted I occasionally leave the kids with him to spend time with friends.
Busyness Can Kill a Relationship
As the kids grew, so did our careers. We had goals and plans for the future, and building our dreams often left us both feeling like hamsters in a wheel. It’s so easy to take each other for granted during this stage of life. After all, we’d made it through the hard part and somehow came out the other side. We made “enough” money to insulate ourselves from the constant stress of getting by.
Even better, our friendship had deepened. We genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. For all our mistakes, we worked to make time for each other during this stage of our lives. Whether having my mother-in-law babysit for an occasional night out or getting up early to enjoy each other in quiet, we prioritized our relationship.
But still, we both battled feeling taken for granted. Whose turn was it to drive which kid where? Who had the more stressful job at the time? I often felt like a glorified and underpaid chauffeur/nurse/cook/housekeeper. There was no question that his income paid for the life we had built, and I’m sure he felt undervalued for what he contributed.
Changing Roles
Then life handed us an amazing gift, though it didn’t feel more like a massive setback at the time. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that could have happened in our marriage.
The company he worked for hit a slowdown. Because they valued what my husband brought to the table, they made him an offer of half his salary for a year in exchange for not going to work somewhere else.
I had been working part-time, but we agreed I would return to full-time, and he would stay home and run the household.
It was an opportunity for me to advance my career and a chance for him to slow down and spend more time with our kids. In reality, it was a very tough year for both of us. I missed being home with my kids, and he got an up-close look at exactly what went into being a stay-at-home parent. To this day, he’ll tell anyone who asks that there is no tougher job in the world.
On the flip side, I also gained a new appreciation for the stressors of a full-time job and the responsibility of knowing that our family depended on my income to maintain the status quo.
That one year changed the trajectory of our marriage. He moved on to another job, and I eventually went to remote work so that we could travel with him more frequently, but we’ve held on to the lessons we learned that year. Each of us brings something valuable and unique to our relationship. Respecting what the other contributes has gotten us much farther than our arguments over who should do what chore ever did.
It left each of us with a profound respect for the role the other played, and it also helped us resolve to prioritize our relationship over material gain, career goals, and other distractions that left us at risk of becoming a statistic.
It’s a controversial idea amidst today’s child-centered family dynamic, but we prioritized our marriage and taking care of each other. After all, if we did our job right, they would become capable adults who would one day leave the nest — and it would again be just the two of us.
Of course, our children’s needs always came first, but we didn’t prioritize their wants over our needs. We implemented a standing date night once a week. We instituted quiet time at night — when they didn’t have to be in bed, but they did have to be quiet in their rooms while we took an hour or so to catch up with each other.
They played sports and participated in other activities that mattered to them, and we were there for all of it. However, we limited them to one extracurricular activity per kid at a time so that every evening wasn’t booked with juggling their activities.
At the time, it felt that showing them what a healthy marriage looked like was more important than living our lives dictated by their schedules.
We learned, grew, adapted, and changed as life evolved. We’ve celebrated thirty-four years of marriage, and it still hasn’t gotten easy. But we are still here and choosing to love and prioritize each other (on our better days).
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
From The Good Men Project on Medium
 |
 |
 |
 |
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—–
Photo credit: Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash
