Marriage is Hard

I want to preface this post by saying I don’t have all the answers. I am not the sagest person, nor will I ever pretend to be. However, I believe in helping others through my own personal experiences and hope that some of these posts will encourage you, open up new discussions within your own home, or perhaps provide a new insight.

Carrying on…

Married couples: did anyone ever tell you how hard marriage would be?

Of course not!

It’s all rainbows and sunshine, kisses and snuggles, romance and being swept off our feet. At least, that’s how we grew up thinking it was with Hollywood and Disney princess movies guiding our notions of it. Right?

Well, let me just clear the air so everyone is on the same page.

Falling in love is easy, but marriage is hard.

It ain’t for the weak or the faint of heart.

Jeff and I were head-over-heels for each other when we met, fell in love, and got married. We were also babies. Jeff was fresh out of college, the ink still drying on his diploma, while I was still hard at work completing my degree. We weren’t tied down with baggage or history or set in our ways. Many would say, it would be easy to fall in love that way and stay together. And it was easy, especially the falling in love part.

But we got older. We started to change. We started to grow up.

For us, that was one of the best things we had to help us form a tight-knit marriage because we grew up together. Others often marry young and discover they’re too different than they were in their teens or early twenties when they first got married. Then they start to grow in different directions. They “want different things”… or some kind of variation of this.

Honestly, I’d attribute three things as to why we’ve been able to stick it out past those “growing up” years. (I’m sure there’s plenty more I could mention, but three sounds like a nice number for this post.)

1. We are each other’s best friend.
2. Our faith in God.
3. We learned each other’s love languages

We learned so much about each other and ourselves as individuals through reading The Five Love Languages. It’s so important to understand your spouse and to do that, you have to make it a point to invest in them. Find out their likes, their dislikes. Find out what drives them and what pulls them down. Find out how you can BEST love them, the way they want to be loved. You may be surprised to find that it’s not the same way you like to be loved. Just because you’re similar and found love IN each other, doesn’t mean you both prefer loving ON each other the same way.

We also had to learn it was okay to fight, as long as we fought for our marriage even more. Our fights mostly stemmed from the obvious—he’s a man and I’m a woman—we’re wired differently! And that’s a good thing! How boring would life be if you were married to someone exactly like you? He’s helped shape me into a better person because his strengths are different than mine.

If you haven’t ever read or done the Five Love Languages Quiz—you need to. It will change your life and your marriage. I learned so much about myself simply by reading this book. I’ve read numerous relationship books over the years, but this one still rings true. It’s a game-changer.

Marriage is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a choice. Make your spouse and your marriage a priority. Invest in them as much as you do yourself and the evidence of that investment will multiply tenfold. You’ll both be happier for it.

What books would you encourage young-marrieds (and even long-time marrieds) to read? Comment below with your suggestions.

You can purchase The Five Love Languages Book and take the quiz by clicking here.

And if you haven’t read The Five Love Languages of Children, I highly recommend it as well!

(Feature photo by: Mackenzie Lamoureux)