TIPS AND TRICKS Keeping your marriage alive
Kevin and I have been together 7 years this November, and married 5 of that this October. It's embarrassing to say, but I've never been in a male-female relationship that lasted this long. I was a little in awe of making it to the almost 2 year mark when we got married.
Most men got on my nerves long before the first year mark. I'm difficult to live with, and I assume, viewing the wreckage of my past love life, I'm difficult to love, too. I want to say that it had more to do with HIS preconceived notions of who I was, and less to do with ME, but that would be unfair. It'd be at least 50-50 on the rose-colored glasses angle. Most of the time, I didn't even know I was miserable in the relationship until it (or I) had blown up.
Even though that's not really the point, it is important in maintaining a healthy marriage--if you don't understand where you've been and why you went through it, relationally speaking, how do you maintain a good thing when you get it? It'd be like passing the Algebra final by good guessing--don't know how you got the answers you got, but you got them, so Hallelujah! and pass the cake, but then you're surprised at your failure in the next course.
I don't like living that way--although I'm really good at winging it, I'd much prefer to actually know what I'm doing and why.
I'm lucky that Kevin got kicked around in the love department too. Miserable as he was, I'm lucky because it made him into a more compassionate & understanding husband and lover.
From the beginning of our relationship, we didn't do the "best foot forward" thing. We were honest with each other about who we were, what we'd each been through, and what we expected. No-holds-barred, we also had both been hurt enough by manipulators and liars and our own misconceptions that neither of us would settle for less.
It requires being adult all the time. It also requires large amounts of honesty, maturity, self-awareness, and restraint. Fair fighting, although I have to say I don't know if we actually fight. We disagree; we argue. Passionately.
We also finish each other's sentences, and most of our disagreements stem from forgetting that we don't actually read each other's thoughts--we approach a topic from two distinct separate angles, and assume the other *gets* what we're saying. And we miss it. We don't *get* it, and have to go back through the words, sifting, stepping carefully, explaining. Frustrated, things get elevated--volumes, tempers, blood pressure.
Even though we do know each other well, and our moods feed off each other (i.e. I'm stressed so he gets stressed, then I stress some more because he's stressing because I'm stressing...), we don't assume that the other one *knows* what's going on inside our heads. I don't expect him to *just know* what to do to help me figure something out, and he doesn't have to *make* me happy. Our happiness, as individuals and as a couple, is fueled by our being individuals who have to reach out to touch each other, and by our being a couple who is willing to expose those embarrassing and sometimes ugly parts of our separate selves. It's hard to do, but always worth it. Unconditional Love isn't lip-service, a catch-phrase, or a pipe dream here in Mumple Land. It's a Truth, as wholly and freely given as two separate people can have.
The biggest factors in our *success* (I wonder if 5-7 years is too early to claim success) is the honesty, our faith that we are supposed to be together, our friendship. We determined, by the wedding, that divorce was not an option for anything less than infidelity. THE Deal Breaker, if you will. Having dealt with it in our pasts, it was the thing that would not be worked through, not tolerated, not survived. Knowing that draws a clear and determinate circle around us. It is the boundary of Mumple Land--it defines us as a couple. Either we are together, or we are not We. And there is no room in our relationship for third, fourth, etc, persons (children not withstanding--they make us a family: they do not define US, or our married/love relationship.)
He is my best friend. Even if I'm angry with him, I still want to be with him. He is always the first person I want to tell when something happens, he's always the person I most want beside me.
I also thank God every day that I met and married this man. The fact that he still makes me laugh, helps me, takes care of me, surprises me, respects me, loves me, and thrills me just makes me all the more grateful that I found my soul mate, even though I don't believe in that sort of thing.
It sounds corny, but it's like my life pre-Mumpledom is someone else's story. If there were no Kevin, there would be no Us, and therefore, no ME today. A clear line has been drawn through my life.
I am still myself, and he is still himself. We just have this other thing, this mutual thing, that we can lean on, take from, give to, and in the end, be better because of. In a world of conflicting messages and demands, I have a safe-haven in Mumple Land, and at it's heart is a man named Kevin. I just hope and pray that in this, I give him the same refuge, love, and safety that he has given me.
Tips and tricks? I don't know if this is what you want to know. I can only try to sum up what Kevin and I have, or do, in our relationship: It's a conscious decision to know and not repeat past mistakes; to be truthful with ourselves and each other; to be strong (or weak) and to allow the other person to be strong or weak; to always keep the relationship, our couple-ness, forward in our minds and hearts. Trusting in each other and in God to be here, as US.
One last thing: We do have a version of most sitcoms' "I Insist". For any decision that involves work in any form from each of us, we ask, "Who is it most important to?" and then, we ask, "Who will be doing the work or cleaning up the mess?" The latter trumps the former, and it's been amazing to realize that while I am a control-freak at heart, I am a lazy control freak--I don't have to have my own way nearly as often because I don't want to do the work or clean up the mess.
