For Better or For Better
As my husband and I inch closer to a decade of being married, here are our secrets to becoming better at marriage.
I grew up in a family that had strict faith practices and parents who fit the “stereotypical” gender roles to a T.
My mom cooked, cleaned, took care of the kids, did laundry, while my dad took care of the trash, the outdoor chores, and was the sole-income-earner. For a little girl growing up in the suburbs of Minnesota, this looked like perfection. So when I fell in love and got married, I figured it would work — Just. Like. This.
Yeah. Younger me was hilariously naïve.
Fast forward a few years. My — then boyfriend — and I were in the parking lot of a free clinic with a positive pregnancy result, thinking about the rest of our lives and I had no idea what I as in for. In two short weeks, we were married.
Because I was adamant on being independent (against our normal cultural practices), we moved out into a third-level apartment and the real adventure of marriage finally began.
My husband worked regular days and would leave the house at 7:30 in the morning and be home after 6 in the evening. I made sure that I was up every morning and to have breakfast ready, the kitchen cleaned, his outfit laid out and his lunchbox packed. In the winter months, I’d also run out and clear the snow off his car and start it — making sure it would run properly and be warm for him when he left.
When he left, I’d haul around my growing belly and take care of the regular cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, dinner prep, and paying the bills that were due, alongside my schoolwork (oh, the life of an online college kid). When he returned home from work, I’d hand wash his work shirt, serve dinner, clean up after dinner, and then run the trash out if there was any.
Six months passed and our son was born; instead of a growing belly, I hauled around a growing child with me while about my day.
A year passed and I started to wonder “What the actual hell? What’s the point of it all?”
Don’t get me wrong, my husband said “thank you”; he kissed me before he left for work, and he even sometimes handed me his shirts instead of just leaving them on the ground for me to pick up… but if this is what marriage was, what the fricking hell was the point?
Did I contract myself in a partnership or into slavery?
The voices of my parents rang in my head:
It’s your job to do this, and his job to do this.
He should be helping you.
He should know better.
It’s your fault because you conditioned him to be like this.
With those little voices, I started wars with my husbands.
We fought about how I was always tired;
We fought about how he left his clothes everywhere;
How I felt like a single mom;
How he was too tired after work to help me with anything;
How his way of contributing was through work;
How I had too many expectations and that “we aren’t your parents”;
I remember going to bed, holding our chunky 6-month old and wondering if I wanted to stay married; how I was afraid of stripping his life apart by leaving his father. I remember planning to pack up my bags while my husband was at work and simply leaving a note. I remember bawling myself to bed and not being able to see in the morning because my eyes were so swollen from crying the night before. I remember thinking, “why the hell is marriage a thing at all?”
Because I was afraid of the world,
Of being alone,
Of tearing my child from his father,
Of being a divorcee,
Of quitting,
Of going against my commitment to my husband and to God,
I decided to stay and just stop.
The funny thing is that I told myself, “he’s [my husband] going to notice that I’m not cooking anymore”, “he’s going to see how messy the house gets when I don’t clean it,” and “he’s going to run out of shirts to wear to work”.
So I stopped when I got tired. If I wanted to sleep in during the mornings, I did. If I was too tired to cook dinner, I didn’t. If I was too tired or just didn’t want to wash his clothes, I didn’t. I left them on the ground. I didn’t lay out his clothes every morning. I didn’t pack his lunch all the time.
This miraculous thing happened.
He made his own breakfast. He cooked dinner for us. He wore the same shirt or grabbed a new one. He figured out that leaving clothes on the ground meant eventually picking them up to wash. He made his own lunch or grabbed lunch at work with his buddies.
The world didn’t end. In fact, it spun a little more efficiently. When I noticed that he did these things, I said, “thank you”, and low and behold, they started happening more often. When my husband noticed that I was less stressed, he said, “I like you better this way.”
We were able to start talking instead of yelling; we were able to identify what brought us into the crazy cycle. We were able to grow.
The marriage that I thought was falling apart wasn’t at all; I had just crippled it. When I stopped being my perfect vision of a wife, I took the crutches out from under my marriage and it got on its own two feet and walked.
The most important lessons this time in our lives taught me:
- You change others by changing yourself. I’m not telling you to change for the benefit of others. No way. I’m saying evaluate your perspective; evaluate your efforts. Change your own tactics and habits so that you can be happy. You can’t actually change others — but you can prompt change, you can evoke change by being the best version of yourself.
- You are not anyone else. Your spouse is not anyone else. Your marriage is not anyone else’s. So stop comparing them and pretending like you can recreate another marriage. No two things will work for everyone. When you let go of unrealistic expectations, you have room to hold onto better things; you have room to create better things.
- When you’re tired, take a beat and rest. Marriage doesn’t call for you to be worn out and exhausted. A messy house is better than a messy marriage.
- Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. No one can read your mind. If you have a problem, voice it, but also voice that you’re ready to be a part of the solution. If you aren’t ready for a solution, take time to think about why and learn to communicate feelings and thoughts without attacking your spouse.
Two more kids later, we’re living in a fully wild house of boys; without these early lessons, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Learning to give each other room, time, and patience to grow on our own and then together is vital. When we start to feel drained and constantly upset, we revisit this time in our lives and attempt to figure out if we’ve recently created unrealistic expectations, are comparing ourselves to other people, don’t have enough time to rest and rejuvenate, or haven’t been talking to each other enough.
Marriage isn’t about roles. Marriage isn’t about society’s expectations. Marriage isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong. Marriage is about two imperfect people coming together through love to grow and inspire each other to be the best version’s of themselves.
If you’re stuck in a rut, revisit the list above and try and figure out where you got lost along the way. Find your way back.
