Eric and I have now been married about a year and four months, I have learned a lot in that amount of time. After the wedding it felt so bizzar to be living together, I remember many sleepless nights because I was not used to sharing the bed as well as countless times I had to remind myself that Eric had to be considered even in every day menial tasks. These are some things I learned very quickly...
1. Our societies depiction of marriage is completely inaccurate
Absolutely nothing in a real married life agrees with reality TV. This is true when it comes to spousal roles, responsibilities, attitudes towards each other and especially sex. I am so thankful that Eric and I see eye to eye on what a God directed marriage should look like. He and I are so different and instead of trying to make each other conform to what society called normal we chose to embrace the fact that God made each of us in all of our uniqueness for a reason.
2. Its ok to be different
For us this is very apparent in the fact that I am the one that has long term career aspirations where as Eric would ultimately like to be a full time father. This is completely opposite of whats considered normal but we love it! If Eric tried to become a very forward, driven, outgoing, goal oriented person or if I tried to sequester my passion and drive to be involved in health care we would both be completely miserable! Now that doesn't mean that Eric doesn't have goals or that I don't have the desire to be a mom. Eric places his goals in valuing our future family over a career, which suits his very patient, nutering and kind personality perfectly. Since we have been married I have longed from deep within, deeper that I thought possible to be a mother. Even though I want to be a career oriented women it doesn't mean that I will not strive to be an awesome mom completely invested in our children's lives.
3. Going against what society sees as normal is hard
When we meet new people one of the first questions everyone askes is "what do you want to do?" First off, this question is really quite ambiguous but you can tell the person asking is usually wanting to know about our career paths. I cringe at this question because when the person finds out that Eric is not quite sure what he wants to do for work and that ultimately he wants to be a full time dad while I want to be an oral surgeon, I always get the feeling that person sees Eric as somewhat inadequate. This is an incredibly false assumption. If Eric was trying to be some big career guy, we would both be spending the majority of our time and effort in tasks outside of our marriage and family. Now I realize that Eric may find a job out of college that is awesome and want to work in that field forever because he is passionate about it. I have no problem with this because I know that God paired us together to be each others help mates, even if Eric does pursue a career he will stay grounded in our family constantly inspiring me to achieve my goals and help people along the way.
4. Men can't read minds
I went into our marriage with so many pre conceived ideas about what my duties were as a wife. it only took a few weeks after school started again for me to realize I needed help. I found myself breaking down and over tears telling Eric that I can't do it all; the cooking, cleaning, laundry, all while working hard at school and trying to live a healthy life style. Some how I had it in my mind that I had to do all this stuff and I found myself feeling like I was failing at marriage or letting Eric down my not being able to do it. After I told Eric through bursts of tears what had been going on in my mind his response shocked me. He said that if I had just shared with him what I felt needed to be done and the areas I could use his help, he would have been glad to lend a hand. I was so relieved to hear that but it didn't surprise me because Eric is my ultimate cheerleader, encouraging me and helping me with everything I aspire to achieve.
5. The alleged honeymoon phase is real
I had always wondered what people meant when they talked about the honeymoon phase. About 1 year and 2 months into our marriage I began to realize that somethings were getting harder. It was harder to always be open and honest, put each other first and for me to be patient when Eric's idiosyncrasies stood out. For me this marked the end of the honeymoon phase we were getting to know each other better and it was getting harder to be ok with our differences instead of trying to make each other into mini versions of ourselves. I always thought the end of the honeymoon phase would be awful, but its not, its just different and filled with all sorts of new things to learn.
6. Love is not what I expected it to be
I don't know how describe what I expected, all I can say that real life love is different. This is not a bad thing, rather its actually quite intriguing. Each day I learn a bit more about how to love Eric better, in the way that means the most to him. I also learn that I interpret his love in different ways that I thought I would. Before we were married I never would have thought that coming home after a very long day and having the huge pile of dishes done would mean "I love you" to me, but now I can tell you that it does. Love is an incredible thing, one of the best things that I have learned is that if you ever find yourself talking to an individual or couple that is struggling with something, look at the bibles definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13. If one of the virtues in this verse is missing...that is usually the root of the problem.
