“You
take two bodies and you twirl them into one.
Their hearts and their bones. And
they won't come undone.” Paul Simon,
Hearts and Bones
Sometime this past year, one of
my good friends texted me and asked me why I never get mad at Sephus. Never?
I responded. I wanted to kill him
twice yesterday and once since we woke up this morning. (Okay – I was exaggerating, but marriage is
HARD! Wonderful… but hard.) When I told her that, she wondered why I
never complain or talk about it. I guess
I figured that getting frustrated was such a normal part of trying to navigate
life as two that it hardly warranted mentioning. As I complete my tenth year of
wonderfully hard commitment, I feel nostalgic and reflective.
Sephus and I got engaged 11
short months after falling in love. We
were still in that goo goo, ga ga, stars in our eyes, drunk on love stage of
our relationship. We wanted to spend
every minute together. We fell in that early version of love so fast; I think
we mentioned marriage for the first time just two months in. It was made of equal parts of these:
1) Genuine
connection through shared interests and values
2) Overwhelming
relief that someone had finally picked us (we were both known for being that
good opposite-sex friend who would make someone so happy someday because we
were so wonderful, blah blah blah so we were always crushing on someone who
would not requite)
3) Being hopeless romantics in love with being in
love.
It felt amazing, but it was unrealistic. You can’t maintain that for long. Sometimes I miss it, or try to live
vicariously through a friend on the cusp of it as she prepares for a first or
second date, but I’m enough of a realist to know you can’t go back to that. I have happily traded it in for something
much more comfortable and boring. Sometimes
I tell people we were dumb to not wait it out a little longer, and really get
to know each other, but really I think we were smart to jump in both feet
first. If you spend too much time
getting to know someone, you will see the faults while you can still back out.
I think the beauty of marriage is being forced to work through that hard
stuff. Running away is not a choice
anymore. You can’t balk to avoid that hard conversation. Despite the song, breaking up can actually be
easy to do when you are dating. I loved
that marriage took away my permission to leave whenever a fight flared up. My
mom once told me that you haven’t been married if you have never thought about
divorce. Growing up, one of my biggest
fears was my parents splitting. Mind
you, I had no real reason to fear that, but I did. So hearing her advice made me a little
concerned. Now I can relate to being so
mad you take a moment to think what would life be like single. Luckily, the daydream lasts about one second
as I realize how absolutely crappy it would be!
Life got hard after we got
engaged. We lost both of our grandmas in
the months/days before our wedding. His
mom was first diagnosed with cancer the February before our wedding. In our
first 18 months of marriage we lost his mother quickly and painfully. Money was tight as Sephus completed his
Master’s Degree during his first year of teaching. We survived an unplanned but
much celebrated pregnancy that ended in miscarriage at 12 weeks. Both of us lost relatives that we cared
about. (I kept thinking we would attend a lot less funerals if we didn’t know
each other.) And just when we thought we were about maxed
out on pain, we watched on as my little brother fought to heal from a house
fire which resulted in a 45 plus day stay in the hospital. Our personal emotional needs during these
tough times took a toll on us. I tried
to repeat these sayings in my head “Marriage doubles your joys and divides your
sorrows” and “We don’t know what we will face, but we know we will face it
together.” However, saying these
greeting card clichés is easy, but truly forgiving and accepting each other’s
inadequacies when we needed each other most was much harder.
I have always loved the Paul
Simon quote about marriage. It sounds so
romantic, especially sung by his soulful voice.
And I agree with the can’t be undone part, but the more I think about is
as I celebrate ten years of togetherness, I think the first part of the quote
speaks to the struggles many marriages face.
You can’t take two bodies and twirl them into one. If you do, you will ultimately see yourself
at the core of that one and assume the other one is being assimilated into your being. When we get married, we are seeking another
player in OUR lives. Sometimes it is
hard to remember that we are marrying someone who also has a life - separate from ours… with separate dreams and needs and
preferences. We need to appreciate each
other’s separateness and work to bridge the understanding between our two
minds, hearts and bodies. That takes
listening, and bending, and respecting, and loving.
To me, marriage is about just
making it work and agreeing to struggle through life together. (Now I write all this with the caveat that
some people are in truly damaging relationships. And when they stop and ponder the divorce
question they cannot say they are better off together. I respect the courage it takes to admit that
and do not write this as condemnation.)
The rewards are bountiless once you make that commitment. It means having a co-coach to game plan your
life with. It means crawling into bed
with someone each night so you can process your day in the quiet dark. It means having a face to go with the pang in
your heart brought on by every cheesy movie or love song. It means sharing the load based on your strengths
(read not having to pick lice out of hair because you don’t have the patience.)
It means someone to call you out. It means surprise laughter as you get ready
in the morning. It means faith that
someone else chose you once and would choose you over and over again given the
choice.
I think a more realistic quote
on marriage is the Bible passage we had read at our wedding. It appreciates the separate lives that join
in one marriage in an attempt to make the journey of life more joyful and
ultimately less challenging.
Ecclesiastes 4:9
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for
their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together,
they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
How can one stay warm alone…
So Happy Anniversary Sephus! Here is to ten years of sharing
labor, picking each other up and staying warm.
