Surviving the Newlywed Phase

In life, I am a lot of things. I’m a woman, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a writer, a homemaker, a Christian, a teacher, and too many other things to name. Most notably, and for the purpose of this piece, I am human. Sometimes my self-control and ability to become irritable or angry don’t even one another out. Sometimes I’m really impatient…and mean. I don’t want to be any of those things. It just happens. 

Sometimes I’m ridiculously emotional, like today, when I cried in the car for thirty minutes for absolutely no reason at all. It’s who I am, it’s humanity – and even though I know prayer and maturity and self-control are all better options, sometimes I let the wheels come off and behave irrationally. If you are talking to my sweet, extremely patient husband, it happens more than sometimes. Particularly if it is a particular week on a monthly calendar. 

 

But he’s not perfect either – he’s a bear when he’s hungry, incapable of thinking of anything else when he has a work thing on his mind, and best of all, he loves to pick on me because he thinks it’s cute when I’m mad. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I feel like when I am angry is cute. 

The point I’m trying to make here, is that marriage is hard. It just is. It’s agreeing to have the same person right next to you for the rest of your life – their toothbrush next to your toothbrush, elbow to elbow in the car, bed, closet, church, dinner table,  and bathroom mirror for ever and ever amen. And, while that definitely does get easier over time, it is NOT easy to jump in with this arrangement straight from a blissful engagement and tropical honeymoon. 

What I wish more people would be honest about is how miserable the first year of marriage can be for newlyweds. While you’re engaged, you’re absolutely bombarded with the idea of newlywed bliss, all shacked up with your new hubby all to yourself. You’ll keep your house spectacular and tidy at all times, and he will love everything you cook and bring you flowers every month on the way home from work. You love each other so much you could burst, so it’s definitely not going to be hard to live together, right?

Wrong. 

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. I wish someone could have told me the truth – not that I would have listened. I was just as starry-eyed as the next affianced girl. You couldn’t have told me anything. I boasted about how David and I were different. Marriage was going to be easier for us, we had the relationship thing down-pat. We’d be together forever…

While I still believe that David and I will always be together – I do love him with all my heart, and I do still believe that what we have is special and unique, I now have a more realistic and non-judgmental understanding of why marriages fail, and why it is so important to put forth a significant effort to keep mine strong. 

You see, there’s this part of us, whether we lived with our parents, by ourselves, or with a roommate or two before marriage, that is wildly independent. As a single woman, I answered to no one. I made plans without having to take anyone else’s time in consideration, I was able to multitask and sometimes successfully execute three or four activities all in one day, I could stay up as late as I liked, sleep in as late as I wanted when I didn’t have anything else to do. I could spend all day in my pajamas reading a book and not eating a thing until dinnertime and it didn’t affect anyone but me. I didn’t have to share my time with anyone, I didn’t have to take time to think about anyone else’s feelings, and I while my freedom was always within reason, I was able to do pretty much anything I wanted. 

Relationships are so different from marriage in this way because you’re not living with a spouse, you aren’t one flesh with one schedule and one budget, and one set of 24 hours in a day to do all the things you need to do – together. 

Needless to say, I wasn’t at all prepared for the culture-shock that marriage was going to be for me. I both rebeled against aligning my time with my new husband’s, and was continuously frustrated with his inability to align his schedule with mine. He was still coming and going as he pleased, not adjusting his work-schedule to bring him home in time for dinner every night. And I was spending plenty of nights home alone fuming as dinner went cold. 

We fought – and fought and fought and fought. We’re both two very strong personalities and so we clashed on everything. If you had told me before marriage that David and I would have a full-on serious argument about which brand of mayonnaise we were going to buy I would have laughed. How ridiculous! But once you get into the “my mom always did it like ___________” conversations, you realize that literally anything can be a source of contention in a marriage.  Don’t even get me started on when he doesn’t like something your family has eaten for dinner your entire life – it’ll feel like he’s just insulted your mother!

So many times, it’s unbelievable how many times, in that first year of marriage did I really and truly wish with all of my heart that I wasn’t married anymore. I would pray and promise everything, anything anything to be free of the burden of marriage. I felt like I was losing myself, that I was having to become someone else. And I didn’t want to, I liked myself just fine. It was scary and very unlike anything I ever experienced before.

Someone asked me right after I was married if I felt married and I was very honestly surprised that I had to say no. I had always thought it would feel different immediately, that it would be some sort of miraculous transformation, and that as soon as we were pronounced man and wife, I would feel lovingly bonded to my husband forever. But feeling married comes on slowly, creepingly and honestly, it wasn’t until I was in the thick of things that I truly felt married – but of course it wasn’t in the lovingly bonded way that I had hoped, instead I felt well and thoroughly yoked. 

But this isn’t meant to be a story of doom and gloom, rather it is one of triumph. Marriage is meant to be two people, coming together, from two very different lives, and making a new life and family together. It’s a beautiful thing, and it has been the best thing in my life. However, for me to truly appreciate and accept this part of myself, there was just as much I had to let go of to embrace it. Becoming a wife for me was like shedding a skin. It wasn’t comfortable at all and I fought against it kicking and screaming. 

One of the most important lessons I have learned from marriage is something I never really had the privilege of understanding from the examples of the married folks in my life (mostly because none of their marriages were ones to look to) was that just because David and I didn’t see eye to eye on things, and just because we drove each other nuts sometimes, did not mean that we weren’t going to make it. You see, I didn’t know how to disagree with my husband or have him disagree with me without overreacting to it. Just because David and I couldn’t agree on what kind of mayonnaise to buy, or how to load the dishwasher, or how many goals we could accomplish in one day didn’t mean that we were destined for divorce like I feared –what it meant was that we were experiencing our growing pains. We were learning things about each other that had never mattered before when we weren’t living under the same roof and we were learning how to love and compromise through the hiccups in our domestic  bliss. 

David and I still argue, and many times it's still over silly things. From experience, though, we are better equipped with knowing when to let things go, when to give each other space, when to compromise, and most importantly, when to let the other have their way – just because we love each other. 

I still study and learn from my husband, and I know he is still learning from me. As we have rejuvenated our Christian faith and our lifestyles have adjusted accordingly, I have learned to let him lead more than ever. While it has been something I’ve grown more and more comfortable with throughout our marriage, I’ve recently been willingly giving him the final say in everything. I do so not because I don’t think my ideas are valid or because I don’t think I can make my own decisions – but because I trust him to take my feelings and ideas in consideration when he does make the choice.  Most of the time, he does things exactly how I would have done them, and even when he doesn’t, I feel comfortable knowing that sometimes things are not completely on my shoulders in life. I’m perfectly comfortable giving this to him.

Two and a half years in is nothing in the larger scheme of marriage, but I can tell you with all my heart, that I am more in love and more happy with my husband now than I have ever been. I am more content, comfortable, and smitten with him now even when he’s driving me crazy than I was six months ago and twice more than I was six months before that, and so on. He and I have faced so much together already, and he has been there for me and supportive of me in ways that no one else has ever been. Time has given us this comfort, and good character on his part has given me the security and support to know that whatever we face in the future, we’re going to do it hand in hand. 

Christ has strengthened our marriage more than ever. Instead of facing our problems all alone and without guidence, we pray. We pray at meal times, we pray before bed, we pray for each other, and pray to lift up our concerns for everyone and everything else. We have accepted God’s will in all things and take the comfort that can be derived from it. We are kinder to one another, more patient, more eager to please the other as a good husband and wife. We’re less selfish, and by being so, more of our needs are met by the other, and not in a scramble to do for ourselves. Our faith and marriage grows stronger every day.

David and I aren’t perfect, sometimes we argue daily. In fact, inspiration for this blog came from me storming upstairs in a huff because he started eating my freshly baked brownies out of the dish with a fork instead of letting me cut them into perfect squares. I was furious! But, by the time I was upstairs and into my pajamas, though, I was already sorry. As much as the thought of my brownies in crumbles drives me nuts, and I’m really trying not to focus on it lest I get exasperated again, it doesn’t really matter. Not in the long run. 

Instead, I choose to focus on the wonderful things about our marriage that I take for granted until we’re apart. Like how David is truly and completely a partner and a team player with me on all things. He takes responsibility and apologises when he’s wrong. He takes half the burden on daily chores like who is going to walk the dogs in the morning and at night vs who is going to make breakfast or pick up the living room before bed. When I don’t feel good or have had a long day substituting, he’ll tell me to go take a nap and cooks dinner for us, his choice. Sometimes I go to put up the laundry and discover he’s already done it and it’s not unusual to see him outside washing one of our cars after work. There’s so many things I can rely on him to take care of without ever being asked, and my daily life is spent endeavoring for him to be able say that about me too.  

David’s and my marriage may be young, but we already have what so many people are without, and that is a solid foundation.  In my life, where so many family members and close friends have come and gone in spite of my love for them, it has been both terrifying and refreshing for someone to come into my life and want to stay forever on purpose, no exceptions. I have no doubt in my mind that the Lord brought us together.  I am so thankful for him, for all of him – even the parts that drive me crazy – and on the fourth anniversary of the day he came into my life, I’m pleased to say that there’s no where I’d rather be, and no person I’d rather be, than his wife. 

If there is anything that can be taken away from this post, I hope it will be that while new marriages are often hard, they’re absolutely worth seeing through and building upon. What we need now more than ever, in this world, is to focus on our families and our faith – if we don’t it will fade with the wind. While I’m still waiting for someone to send me an “I survived the newlywed phase” t-shirt, I hope you’ll take from this a little peace and comfort that your own marriage is more resilient than the petty things you and your spouse tend to spar over. 

Happy anniversary, David, I am so thankful for our marriage and I’m glad I let you switch us to Duke’s mayonnaise and that you learned to let me load the dishwasher how I want.

Blessings!