Yesterday marked four months of marriage for Carolyn and me. We had a conversation the other day about what we say when people ask us how things have been. Because, on the one hand, we don’t want or need to air the ins and outs of everything we’re going through; but, on the other hand, we don’t want or need to over-extol the joys or present an untrue picture of married life.
So … here are a few things I’ve learned in the last 124 days:
Some things are awesome.
- I get to spend almost every day with the person I love the most.
- I get to share daily goings-on, little and large, with my best friend.
- I have someone who loves football as much as I do and will understand when a Seahawks loss makes me irritable.
- One of the things that drew me to Carolyn was that I wanted to see how God would continue to be at work in her life, and I get a front row seat to that — I get to experience the times of revelation and growth, and that is tremendously exciting to witness.
Some things are challenging.
- I have to spend almost every day with the person who knows me the best. I’m learning that I’m not as gracious or patient as I thought I was, not as good a communicator, not as unselfish as I hoped I was, and that there’s far more that God needs to do in me than I would like!
- When two people, who’ve been single for almost 60 years (combined), with two separate lives, two sets of friend groups, two very distinctive and different backgrounds, upbringings, educations, experiences, and schedules, come together, there’s a lot of give and take. It’s easy to have the presumption (or even the unconscious, unspoken expectation or hope) that being married will simply mean the addition of a best friend to your pre-existing schedule, but I can attest that that isn’t the case — and that’s been a teachable moment!
- Being someone who’s married rather than someone who’s single means learning a new way of understanding other relationships and communicating and being intentional in hanging out or catching up — with friends, with our church community, with family. Part of this means redefining expectations (on all sides) — and as my counselor has taught me: “Change = Loss = Grief.” But when one or both sides aren’t aware that there’s something to be grieved, we can be surprised by how we react (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).
- Learning how to prioritize growth over winning is refining in itself. There’s a strong desire toward self-preservation, which can express itself in putting self first. In disagreements, my inclination is to try to win, to articulate my points, to make sure that I’m understood. But trying to understand more than I’m understood, trying to properly listen to and hear what the other person’s saying, trying to seek her good and the good of our relationship — this is something I’ve tried to do throughout my life, but in a marriage it’s that much more magnified.
Of course, just because something is challenging doesn’t mean it’s bad — indeed, many of these challenges are part of the growing and maturing process, and for that I’m glad. So grateful to be figuring all this out in community — I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to have folks we can text to be praying for us or to talk through the hard times or to celebrate the joys of life.