Can a marriage last more than six years?
—
Going into my tenth year of marriage caused me to do some deep thinking. I have found myself picking apart my relationship with my husband—kiss by tender kiss, eye roll by stank eye roll, and laugh by not-as-funny-as-he-thinks laugh. I keep re-evaluating our status, trying to figure out how in the world we made it this far, especially when all the odds were stacked against us from day one.
Most couples go into marriage believing the odds are (ever) in their favor, but cannot seem to last more than six years before calling it quits. My husband and I will soon have survived nine complete years together, embarking us on a journey to our centennial anniversary. There has to be some reason we lasted this long. Something besides the love factor, that is—because, in this day and age, love never seems to be enough.
Love is blind, so seeing is believing
Love is blind, they say, and I agree. Seeing is believing, they say, also, and I’m a firm believer of it as well. The two statements actually go hand-in-hand with one another well, complimenting each other’s truthfulness. Just because one cannot see with their eyes does not mean they are unaware or unknowing of what goes on around them. Our other senses pick up what we are blinded to, through sound, sensation, and the vibrations of energy waves. Love may block our vision of reality, but there is no hiding from it when it sings loudly in one’s ear and sends vibrations rippling through the emotionally-charged air and straight into our hearts.
I chose not to see what I could feel in my core because it was easier to ignore the tangible and let love carry me onwards. And it did.
When I met my husband, I had two very young sons—only eight and twenty months old. My new husband and I were so naïve and disillusioned by life, caught up in our own personal wars against inner demons unbeknownst to one another on a grander scale. It was a marriage of self-serving convenience and emotional security on both our parts—fueled by lust and lit ablaze by the sparks from our souls colliding, connecting, and cementing a bond in place.
Fast and furious, a passion took us by storm and led the way into the netherworld of happily-ever-afters. We had no idea what we were in for. We knew not what we were doing. And, we didn’t even care. Both of us had what we needed for momentary bliss and that was good enough to choose to get married. He had the security of a woman willing to walk through fire for him and I had the security of man to protect my sons and I, as I struggled to make a good, solid life for them. For us.
Just like that, we were an instant, ready-to-serve family.
The first three years
No one had faith our marriage would last more than those first couple of years. Our extended families saw blatantly what we were blind to—two emotionally disturbed, reckless, and irresponsible adults acting like children and thinking with nothing but hormones.
The first three years of our marriage were all fun and games, just riding out the honeymoon phase and playing house with the babies. Barely into our mid-twenties, my husband and I couldn’t get a handle on how to adult individually, let alone, act as a partnership. Bills went unpaid time and time again because we kept confusing who was to pay what and arguing over what was fair.
There was either no food or so much food most of it would rot before a third of it could be consumed. Chores piled up as neither of us wanted to take direction from the other, rebelling against any air of authority the other exerted. We were so immature, both of us still saw things in term of our own personal stake in the matter. There was no “ours,” as we forcefully mashed our lives together under one roof. There was his way and there was my way, but no meeting in the middle. Unless it was the middle of the mattress.
Before we knew it, our third anniversary had come to pass and we were expecting our first baby as a couple. No matter how disillusioned we were to the mismatch of our relationship, the reality of bringing a new life into our sanctimonious mess could not be denied. Picture a gargantuan sized fireball produced from a collapsing star, hurtling through space at hyper speed, colliding into a solid chunk of meteor, and bursting from the intensity of the fiery fusion. This is the image of what it must have looked like when my husband and I suddenly awoke from our perpetual temper tantrums and scrambled to pull ourselves together as we should have all along.
The calm before the storm
The intensity between us ruptured as our relationship entered, what I now refer to as, the calm before the storm. In an instant the instability subsided and a peaceful vibe settled around us. My husband worked to become the family man he had avoided in the beginning. He took charge of our finances and tried to keep a budget. Everyone settled into a routine of work, daycare, family dinners, and chores. We were creating a family as new life grew inside me. By the time the baby was born, we had enough money saved to move into a place of our own with a yard the kids could actually play in.
For a while, it seemed like we were headed down the right track. We were maturing into our roles as mom and dad, the kids were thriving, we were turning our new house into a comfy, cozy, little family home. Stability seemed like it was going to stick around for awhile and let us focus on parenting two boys and a brand new baby girl. Our puzzle pieces finally came together in the right places.
Or so I thought. Like I mentioned before, love is blind and seeing is believing. In my youthful naivety, I was not privy to the true nature of addiction; completely unaware of anything, besides hard-core street drugs like heroin and meth, being in the realm of its scope. I was raised sheltered from the true horrors of the world, except for the brief moment in my fourth grade D.A.R.E. program, because my father was a police officer who wanted to preserve my innocence somehow.
My husband’s abuse of prescription medication was right in my face and I didn’t recognize it for what it was. With my own health issues requiring narcotic pain medications, I eagerly followed his example, believing the farcical charade we were living wasn’t what it really was. Until it was too late and we were in too deep, of course. Struggling to pull myself out of the pit we had dug together, every time I was close to building up a big enough pile to reach the top, he would dig in his heels, refusing to budge.
That is, until the law got involved. Jail time and rehab are great recourse for such mindful deviancy. While my husband was away, I was able to regain balance in my own life. Do some soul-searching and relationship analyzing—as I’m doing now. I had let myself be blind to my husband’s actions, because I didn’t want to believe there was anything wrong I couldn’t help him to fix. He needed to be fixable with the addiction issues a temporary glitch; you cannot fix something that was made to seem broken, like those fake bullet hole car window decals. Hanging on to the hope he could some day change his ways, I had to believe my husband’s intentions were golden in motive or else my time spent making us a family in the face of the naysayers would have been all for vain. I did not want to face them, did not want to admit to failure, and I did not want to walk away from someone whose tender heart was being masked by his inner demons. I chose to stick by his side and keep pushing ahead. We were bound together in one heartbeat, souls intertwined in a lovers trance, and the strength beneath each other’s wings. One may never get a chance to love like that again.
Five and a half years in
Five and a half years in, my husband was in full recovery. He chose not to give up, either. Growing older, wiser, more mature with every rising moon, we began to find ourselves rebuilding our crumbled foundation and beginning the life together we tried unsuccessfully to create out of the starting gate. Lessons learned, tides changing, the atmosphere was ripe for new beginnings.
And new life. She—our daughter—wasn’t in our plans, and as she joined my sons, this relationship was unable to tolerate the stormy waters new life creates to those in its care. Yet, it was smooth sailing this time. She reconnected all of us as a unit, and provided encouragement for my husband and I to try and little harder to keep it together. He found a job which could grow into a career while giving me the opportunity to be a stay at home mom. My husband and I learned to be a team, to compliment each other’s strengths and fortify each other’s weaknesses.
The plan
For the first time, we had a plan. Goals. A working marriage. Every so often, our harmony would falter and damage from the past would creep in. For a few days, a week, sometimes even a month, we would grind each other’s nerves to the stub; tearing each other down instead of building each other up. Turmoil plagued us. However we tried to go about fixing our relationship, nothing changed. I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that two people can be happy as a family together, happy as best friends, but so relentlessly miserable as a couple. Balance was not our forte. Work schedules, school schedules, doctors appointments, social gatherings… they pile up and overlap, tearing us apart a little more every day. Then life will dawdle, momentarily. Giving us days together, instead of mere minutes in passing, and we dance a little closer, a little slower, a little more on beat.
There’s hope for what’s to come, the change of time taking effect and moving us along where we’re supposed to be. Slowly, but surely, we climb the mountain hand in hand. Immune to toxicity, it seems, we persevere. Wisdom is on our side, now. We figured out this adulting business, by some ungodly miracle.
And so now, here I sit in reflection. Searching in all of the hidden recesses, the deep, dark nooks and crannies of our marriage, I am desperate to find the needle in the haystack of understanding, through the eye of which, I can catch a glimpse of reasoning… A fragment of illation revealing the premise of our foundation… The key to unlocking the greatest mystery my life has conjured up, yet. To last nine years with one another, despite the trials, triumphs, and tribulations of pestilence hanging precariously overhead, is the greatest feat of my existence, thus far. A challenge which would consume most others, crushing their spirit and ravaging their soul until nothing remains. Others who would have given up before it ever began. Others who couldn’t withstand the course of time at time’s own preferred, snail-crawl pace. And I realize I’ve been looking through the needle’s eye all along. For the answer has always been there, right down the tip of my nose….choice. It has all been about choice. About choosing to do it.
Love alone is not enough to sustain anything. It connects. It unites. It fuels and provides for.
It doesn’t uphold, preserve, or stay. That is done by choice. It is my choice to stay in this marriage, just as it is for my husband, as well. It is a choice to get up every day and say, “We can do this, again.” It is our choice to keep looking for a better way to be. A better way to work at us. A better way of life for our family. It is our choice to focus on the good that has come…has yet to come. It is our choice to stick with each other at our worst and ride out the bad times side by side, knowing time will move us along where we are meant to go on its own accord. Time is omnipotent, fated by destiny, and my husband and I are, umm, well, ugh… we’re merely just humans. In love.
Choosing to live and let be.
♦◊♦
-Photo: Leo Grübler/Flickr
The best way is to never get married.