Dear Readers,

Last week I referred to people having problems in their marriage.

With permission, I have gained from my partner, I have this to say. I am “people”

These pictures make it look like we are the perfect couple and always smiling but that’s only half the story, friends.

It’s not as if I have a picture of us fighting that I could show you… but trust me, they exist.

We work hard at this marriage thing.

It’s HARD. Way harder than anyone talks about. Why is that? Do we think if we don’t talk about it, that it will somehow be less real or stressful? Well, I don’t think so. There is nothing so gratifying as when talking to a friend that you hear those words, “you too?” and you feel that innate sense of connection.

My partner and I have been together for the better part of 11 years and married for 8 of those years. We have weathered the storms of getting out of debt, miscarriage, and several other tsunamis of stress and complex and intimate details I won’t share here, maybe ever.

We all have chapters we would rather leave unpublished.

So the thought I had recently is “why is it so hard?”- I mean, I love him, he loves me. We laugh together, we dance, we cry and we even sing together sometimes.

We also do not agree and get loud and emotional when we don’t. In other words, we fight.

I have heard it said, It’s okay to fight in front of your child, but also be sure that they see you make up or resolve it. I think for the most part we do that well.

I used to think that didn’t make too much sense, after all, won’t it scar them for life to see their parents fighting? Well, my guess is that like everything else, unless you model behavior for them, how else do they learn?

I sure didn’t learn how to fight from my parents. They fought and never resolved anything.

My father did a lot of avoiding fighting and so when it comes to our marriage, I definitely do not want to repeat those mistakes, so instead started making all new ones. But seriously, we have help, we take advice and we choose every day, every hour, every minute, every second to be married, and we choose each other.

It’s a hard thing for me to be so selfless for someone else and I am glad to say, he returns the favor and we definitely do the dance of healthy compromise and we find our way down new paths every day.

It’s not easy, AND it is worth it.

Think About It.