Things I Learned from Being Married

It is hard to believe that my husband, Eric, and I will be celebrating 25 years of marriage on June 5^th. That truly blows my mind! I am thrilled to say that after all these years together, we are still very much in love and in “like” with one another. Yes, I actually like my husband! He truly is my best friend and the rock on which I lean, besides God I mean. Having said that, I will be honest and say that it wasn’t all sunshine and roses between us. We have had some great years, but we have also had some very trying years. There was even a time when we almost lost each other. Basically, we married young, had kids, started to get complacent, we grew apart for a time, but then we realized how much we truly loved each other and, thank God, we grew back together. I can honestly say that we are closer now than we have ever been.

We did not get this way by osmosis. It took lots of hard work and inner reflection to fix the problems in our relationship. As a result, we have both learned so much about what it means to be married, what it means to nurture a relationship, and we also learned so much about ourselves in the process, and it was a process. So now, I would like to share some of the things I learned by being married. These are things I didn’t really know well enough before I got married but definitely learned, at a deeper level, along the way. Incidentally, these are in no particular order.

Communication is essential!

We have all heard this said, and a lot of us believe we know how to communicate, but we may not be as good at it as we may think. I’ll speak for myself here. I always thought I was an open book, that people always knew how I felt and that I was honest about my feelings. I confess that did not always apply when it came to my marriage. I fell into a lot of the communication traps that can cause problems in a relationship. For example, I ran on the assumption that Eric should have known what it was that I needed and wanted from him. When he fell short of my expectations, I harbored resentment. I wasn’t clear about my emotional needs and when he failed to meet them, my resentment grew, causing me to behave in, let’s just say, not so pleasant ways. That, in turn, caused him to feel that I didn’t respect him and he became resentful too. Neither of us really fully knew what our own needs were because we were so young when we married. It was through trials and tribulations, plus wisdom that comes from the willingness to learn, that we finally learned to really and truly communicate. Neither of us harbors bitterness anymore. We address issues immediately so they can be worked through and resolved. As it says in Ephesians 4:26, we “do not let the sun go down before you [we] have dealt with the cause of your [our] anger.” We talk about it and we resolve it.

“A  happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” (Ruth Bell Graham)

All I have to say to this is, CAN I GET AN AMEN?!?! In order to be able to let go of bitterness and/or resentment, we must be willing to forgive our spouse, sometimes daily, for both the big offenses and the small ones. My feelings about forgiveness have evolved over decades and I have learned a few things. Essentially, forgiveness is a journey; it is a process. We don’t just utter the words, “I forgive you” and POOF, all the anger is gone. It may be that easy at times, but, most of the time, it is much more difficult than that. When it comes to our spouse, let’s face it, we are human. Things are going to get on our nerves. We may even find ourselves actually filled with rage over something our spouse has said or done, but, in order to deal with those feelings, we must be willing to forgive our spouse. You must. There is no reconciliation without forgiveness. Also, you probably have done things in the marriage that require forgiveness as well. I have learned that forgiving Eric for past offenses was the only way to move forward and heal the damage in the relationship and he has done the same for me. Oh yes, and don't forget to forgive yourself too!

Marriage is a sacred covenant and not a mere contract that can be easily broken.

I can honestly say that when I walked down the aisle on June 5, 1994, I had not a doubt in my mind about marrying Eric. Divorce was not even a remote possibility in my mind. The same was true for Eric. I learned later how essential that mindset actually is when entering into marriage. The divorce rate in the US is over 50%. That is startling to me. As a therapist who has worked with numerous couples, I have found that the couples who got married with the thought of divorce as a safety net were the ones who usually were more vulnerable to the demise of their marriages. Let me add this disclaimer. Abuse is never acceptable, whether it is verbal or physical. I would never advocate for someone remaining in an abusive situation. Having said that, I do believe that some people enter into marriage not understanding or believing how sacred the marriage union truly is. Many couples enter into the marriage without a clear vision of what they want their marriage to look like. Many haven’t really discussed the major life issues to really know whether their views are compatible. Then, when the first sign of trouble comes, and rest assured, it will, they tend to give up too quickly. Their fallback is to divorce rather than do the necessary work to repair the relationship.

I am so grateful that my husband and I shared that value. Neither of us was willing to just give up on our marriage, and believe me, we were both tempted at one point or another. Ultimately though, we realized that our love was too strong, our bond was too tight, and nothing was going to destroy that. As my faith grew stronger over the years, I really learned and grew to understand the meaning of man and woman becoming one flesh. In my younger years, that was an abstract concept, but here is what I have come to understand. Man and woman, when they come together, represent the whole of who and what God is. The man is the authority, protector, and provider side of God, while the woman is the nurturer, caregiver, and life-giving side of God. Two equal parts of a whole are what marriage is. That is why what God has joined, no one can ever tear apart. That is one of the greatest things I learned from being married to my beloved.

Men and women are different and that is ok!

I’ve written about this many times before. I think I already knew this before I got married, but I really learned just how different men and women are by being married to a “typical guy.” Eric is a very masculine man. He’s a very practical and logical thinker. His defense mechanism when things are difficult is to problem-solve and think in logical and practical ways. He believes in and has cultivated the art of not allowing his emotions to cloud his thinking, especially when there are distressful things occurring. This used to drive me absolutely insane! I am the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I am a tremendous problem solver in my professional life, but when it comes to my personal life, I am very emotional, especially when I see those whom I love struggling. This used to drive Eric insane.

This difference between us, which is a very common difference between men and women, caused a lot of strife between us in our early years of marriage. I felt, at times, as if I was suffering alone during trying times in our lives together. I felt as if Eric was mentally checked out of the relationship. It was especially difficult when I was raising my twins. He worked, a lot, and I was a stay-at-home mother for a few years. I felt very alone much of the time. I felt like I was out of sight and out of mind to my husband. Meanwhile, Eric was having his own struggles. He worried about finances and was doing his best to keep us afloat on one salary. He had a jerk of a boss who made his life miserable. He started to feel inadequate, especially as my resentment grew. You get the picture.

As we matured and as we started to let down our defenses and learn to view things from the other’s perspective, we realized that much of our issues stemmed from misunderstanding our inherent differences. Bill and Pam Farrell wrote about this in their book, Men are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. They discussed how men think in “boxes,” or they compartmentalize their lives. Women, on the other hand, think like a plate of spaghetti, where every aspect of their lives is touching and overlapping. I think that is a very accurate description and certainly describes Eric and me. Once we realized that, we stopped fighting those differences, and then we learned to use them to our individual and collective advantage. Now, when difficulty arises, Eric allows me room to be emotional and I yield control to him, since he’s great at staying calm and thinking clearly in a crisis. Now, we are a fantastic team and there is no more resentment between us.

The marriage relationship must be nurtured and tended to daily.

There are several insidious things that can ruin a marriage and one of those is something that people often do not realize until it is too late. That is complacency. This is a seemingly innocuous thing. We all get complacent from time to time. Between work, kids, house, family, we are so tired! I know there are days that all I want to do when I get home from a very long workday is sit in silence. I literally talk all day, every day, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is to be on the phone or hear people’s complaints. Sometimes, I just want to check out mentally. That’s ok, sometimes, but it becomes a problem when that sometimes becomes most times. Once couples allow complacency to set in, they stop attending to each other’s needs. They start taking each other for granted. Not only does the encouragement and positive feedback that couples once shared diminish, but the negative comments and complaints also increase. Couples find that they become hyper-focused on their spouse’s faults or shortcomings and that is when a rift between them begins. That rift leaves room for the resentment to grow. Once that resentment takes hold, a marriage, in which the spouses had left the door open to divorce from the moment they said their “I do’s”, is in serious jeopardy. To avoid this danger, spouses must make a concentrated effort to tend to each other’s emotional needs.

I have found that it doesn’t take much to make Eric happy and he has discovered the same about me. Daily, small acts of affection, like saying “I love you”, snuggling together, sending each other loving texts to let the other know you are thinking of him or her,  and so many other gestures, both big and small, can make such a difference in the relationship. Basically, we need to know from our spouses that they love us, appreciate us, miss us when we are not there, and cherish us. I once told my husband that not only do I want to know you love me, but I want everyone to know you love me, whether I am in your presence or not. Since then, he has accommodated that need quite nicely. I hope I do the same for him.

As I am typing, I realize this is getting a bit lengthy. I have so many more things to share about what I have learned from being married to my love for 25 years, but I’ll stop here. I thank you if you have made it this far. I just want to wrap up with some parting words to those of you who are married or hope to be married one day. Remember that you and your spouse are not enemies or competition. You are teammates and partners. You are on each other’s side, which means you must always build each other up, encourage each other, support each other, pray for one another and be the strength when one is weak. Marriage is supposed to be the shelter in the storm, not the storm itself. Protect it from harm. Fortify it with love and respect. Strengthen it with good communication and constant forgiveness. Supplement it with joy and laughter. Honor it by honoring each other. I truly believe that, short of abuse, any problem in a marriage relationship can be overcome, as long as both spouses want it badly enough and work hard enough to make it better. I also believe that God can rectify, reconcile, and resurrect any marriage, as long as we remember how sacred it is and how blessed we are to have it. I am blessed beyond measure to be married to my soul mate. May you be as blessed!