Then Comes Marriage.

Marriage is hard. Hard as hell.
Lately I’ve been having conversations with friends and family members, watching Tik Tok storytimes, and reading books that shine a light on marital topics. We’re all at this stage where we’ve been with our partners for many years now and some have pushed through, some are still struggling, and some have been completely wrecked.

COMMUNICATION
My husband and I have finally reached a place where we aren’t fighting every single second of the day. Obviously our marriage didn’t start off like this. When you’re finally out of the honeymoon stage and throw in issues with finances, mental health struggles and children, it can rock the boat. Don’t get me wrong, the fights may have lessened but the fights can still be extreme and passionate. We are both fire signs and we always tend to light shit up. It’s just who we are. Ryan and I definitely don’t have a perfect marriage. It is absolutely far from that. We are both hella hard headed, quick with a temper, and loud as can be. But I think we’ve found a way to be a little better in our communication, which opens us up to be more forthcoming and patient in the last couple of years. We are an absolute work in progress. Honestly, as proud as I am of the couple we have become, these progressions came with a lot of struggle. It came with a good amount of times of us being unkind to each other. We were assholes to each other (and we still can be).

For a long time, we didn’t know how to communicate with each other well. I am the type of person who shuts down during a fight and he wants to keep talking about it no matter the level of anger. He never understood I needed to step away to cool off and separate myself for a bit and I never understood his need to fix things right away. As the years have gone by, we found a way to handle this divide better than we had before. Although he still tries to talk things out right then and there, his approach has evolved to also respect how I am processing the situation. He’s learned to give me the space I need which makes it easier for me to give him the conversation we need. Did we perfect this? No. Do we still make mistakes? Yes, but from what I see, we both have tried to communicate better BEFORE we reach the highest level of battle.

When we have to reveal our feelings to each other, we’ve gotten better not blaming each other for why we feel a certain way. We start off conversations like “Can I tell you something? I don’t want you take this the wrong way…” or “I don’t mean this as disrespect..” or “Can I speak freely?..”
We’ve been married for a while now and we know each other hella well. We know there are things we can say that can come out not as we intended it to. What works for us, is giving each other a warning before we spit out our true thoughts and feelings. Ryan and I are rough around the edges so we know we don’t always sound as soft as we would like. We have also learned to receive this communication as a safe opening to a possible difficult discussion.

Just because my marriage is “on good standing” status right now, it’s not lost on me that it won’t continue to go through waves. We. Are. Human. We’ve seen fun smooth years and we have also seen some years where we both have questioned whether or not we should continue our marriage. But I do know that we both love each other and both love the life we have built together. We love each other enough to know that marriages and relationships can not just survive and thrive off love alone. They also need trust, communication, action, respect, the willingness to grow together, to learn together, and to make changes where changes are needed. I’m sure we will continue to make mistakes and will possibly continue to hurt each other at times. We will probably forget things we learned to have a healthy conversation and revert back to the way we used to be during some fights. But as we currently move through our marriage, we are always trying to do the best we can and that’s how I know we are still a down duo, we are still willing and able to do the work. Together.