marriage

Maybe August is a hard month for marriages.

Or maybe my friend group is in a hard season for marriages.  Demanding careers, young kids, aging parents.  Juggling decisions like moves and education and finances and what’s too much or not enough. 

Whatever the reason, I’ve had heartbreaking conversations this month with a number of my friends.

We haven’t had a passionate kiss in over a year.

He rolls his eyes at everything I do.

We’re sleeping in separate rooms.

Watch, we don’t even talk to each other.

We can’t agree on how to spend our money, ever.

I just don’t know how much longer…

It is crazy hard.  This marriage thing.  Crazy hard.  I’ve been writing about the struggle as long as I’ve been writing.

You look from inside your hurting marriage and see the outside image other people project about their own marriages and think, wow, it’s so much easier for them.

I had one friend, who was sharing her hurts, say to me, but you and Bray, you just keep it alive and are still so in love.

Ha!  I laughed.  Not that we aren’t in love, yes we absolutely love each other, but let me tell you our marriage has just as many hurdles as yours!

Yes, we had a wonderful getaway this summer for a couple of days but even getting to the getaway was hard.  And then returning to real life and paying for the getaway was hard. 

Last August, we were in the middle of a tremendously hard place, and we bounced back, but we still fight. Because there is no way you are going to agree with someone every day for the rest of your life.  

That is what you do.  You live to fight another day. 

I was talking to my father in law at the farm a couple of weeks ago.  I love this man.  He’s just another awesome thing my hubby brought to our marriage.  Talk shifted from the oil business to marriage.  He and my mother in law have been married for 56 years.  FIFTY SIX YEARS. 

He will tell you, and was telling me over wine on the back porch, marriage is hard.  The seasons are gorgeous and then brutal.  So you just tell yourself, and your spouse, I am in this thing.  I am not leaving.  He and I sat outside, as the sun went down, talking honestly about the tough spots marriages find themselves in and how you push through.
(Obviously, I’m not talking about abusive relationships. But just the hardships of every marriage.)

There are marriages that look easy.  Romance and roses. They are not. It’s all Instagram-ed, Facebook-ed, photoshopped pictures.  You don’t see them when the bad news come.  When the job loss hits.  When the kids get sick or the parents die or one travels all the time or the money dries up. 

No one has a piece of cake marriage. No matter what you see or what you think.

So what do you do? 

My close friends and I were just discussing this.  When you feel on the brink in your marriage, how do you step back?

1. Kiss.  On the mouth.  Really kiss.  Not a passing peck.  For thirty days straight.  Do it in the morning or the evening or both.  But kiss.  In front of your kids.  Embarrass them.  Let them see what marriage can look like after years.

2. Say something nice.  For thirty days straight.  Say one nice thing to your spouse every single day.  Find a way to compliment them or thank them.  Focus on the good. Keep a journal if you need to make sure you don’t forget a day. 

3. Be in the same bed at the same time.  Without kids.  Intimacy will not fix the underlying hurts but it absolutely helps.  In order for that to happen, you have to be in bed at the same time and your kids have to already be in their own beds.  This can’t happen every single day, I realize.  We all travel or have sick kids you’re up with in the middle of the night (I just was last week).  But prioritize the same bed, same time, just you two, for thirty days straight. 

4. Use psychology 101 words to start talking.  There is a reason we teach our kids to say “I feel.” It shifts the conversation to what you are experiencing which can’t be challenged. I feel lonely when we don’t talk about our day after work. I feel disrespected when you roll your eyes at me. Whatever the thing is. Money, time, family, words, etc. Start the conversation. Recognize what your spouse does, I’m so grateful for… but also acknowledge where you all are struggling.

5. Be Honest. A friend of mine and I had a hearty laugh when she shared how she learned to manage expectations. When she was pregnant, she would get super emotional, and her husband did not know how to respond. By her simply saying, I don’t need you to do anything, I just need you to be here with me, she was able to let him know what she needed. I did that last week about work, can you just listen to this so I can unload it somewhere? Share where you are at and what you need. Don’t make them guess.

It’s imperfect. It’s three steps forward and two steps back. But hold on. Fight through the dark hours – there is sun up ahead.

We all five filed in the pew.  Sundays in the summer mean sporadic church attendance because of all the travel.  I couldn’t remember the last time all five of us made it on the same morning.

We attend a contemporary service, often to my hubby’s chagrin since he’s less enthusiastic about electric guitars in church.  I, on the other hand, love the music.

As we stood singing, I grabbed the hand of the man I fell in love with over 13 years ago.  The lyrics to one song sank deep into my bones:

God with us,
God for us,
Nothing can come against,
No one can stand between us.

I’m sure the songwriter had the collective “us” in mind when he wrote the song.  I couldn’t help but take an entirely different meaning away.

If you’ve been married for longer than two months, you’ve probably had a bad day in your marriage.  If you’ve been married longer than two years, you’ve probably had a bad month or two.

As I squeezed my husband’s fingers, I sang those words like a battle cry:  Nothing can come against, no one can stand between us.  I planned to claim another victory on the field of the enemies who attack our marriages.

We’ve had good days and bad days and good months and bad months.  Our start to the summer was no piece of cake.  There’s so many moving parts with his stuff and my stuff and the kids stuff and it gets messier in the summer.  (I know some people LOVE summer. As a schedule person, I crave the routine of the school year with kids.)

But it’s been a good month.  I felt like we stepped off another battlefield having reclaimed our ground. The song this morning reminded me how you come back stronger.  How you battle through the hard and the roots grow down deeper.  The Bible reminds us of this:  And the God of all grace… after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10)

I do not understand the why and the when of the hard patches – in marriage, in family, in health, in work, in whatever the obstacle.  But I pray I never cease being thankful for (or recognizing) the growth on the other side.  The healing.  The strength.

Tonight, the eldest commented I had too much romance in my life.  When I asked why, he said because you’re always kissing people.  Who am I always kissing, I inquired.  Daddy, he replied.

It’s not just about the kissing, but I’m grateful for that part of it too.

 

He had gotten home late last night.  I’d fallen asleep and never heard him crawl into bed.

We heard a thump, thump, thump of something banging the next morning.  Kids must be up, we each must have been thinking.  He came out of the bathroom and shrugged on his clothes.  He walked over to my side of the bed and gave me a legit good morning kiss.  I’ve missed you, I thought.

He headed out to survey the chaos outside our bedroom and shut the door behind him.  Signaling the gift of me having the option to stay in bed longer while he managed the minions.  Feeling incredibly thankful for him and his generosity, I got up and went to join him.  He started a big pot of coffee, enough for my family who was staying the weekend, and I started breakfast.  A tag team routine we have down even when it’s just our five.

It was Sunday morning after all so not too much lingering over coffee.  Instead we all peeled off after breakfast to get ready.  A large pack of freshly cleaned clothes hung in my closet.  Without asking or telling, he had run to pick my things up from the cleaners.  It must have been Friday before he left town, he’s the best, I mused again at how fortunate we are to have him.

We walked into church on time and minimally wrinkled and found our pew near-ish the back in case of a kid outburst.  I assume we’re nearing the end of that stage, but we’ve become accustomed to our place in the sanctuary.

The sermon started and he put his arm around my shoulders while I held his other hand.  This is a move that still takes my breath away after over a decade.  I remember my entire 20s sitting in churches, single, and so longing for a relationship.  I watched the couples sitting around me and found the men putting their arms around their girlfriends or wives one of the most beautiful and romantic gestures I could possibly witness.  I dreamed of that happening for years.  I can still remember the first time this man of mine put his arm around me. I couldn’t help but lean over to kiss him because I still find it a little unbelievable to be sitting in church with a man I’m in love with draping his arm around me.

We came home.

He and my brother set to work disassembling our current entertainment center (circa the late ’90s) and installing a flat screen t.v. on the wall while I made sandwiches for lunch.

I watched him work, patiently, methodically, accurately, and felt my heart swell up yet again.  He can fix anything and will press through the complications and uncertainty until everything is done correctly.

He has a big birthday on Wednesday.  This is the thirteenth birthday I’ve spent with him.  On the first one, I styled a complex, poem-based, adventure with clues for the next birthday surprise waiting to be uncovered.  We went to Hawaii right after his birthday the first year we were married.  One birthday I was on bedrest and he waited on me.  One year was a surprise 40th birthday party with all his friends and family.

I love him so much.  We struggle.  We fight.  We have good days and bad days.  But today I was reminded of how incredibly and impossibly in love with him I am.  I love him the most in the small day-to-day moments that can go unnoticed if I don’t take the time to write them down and acknowledge them and thank him for all he does.

He is so generous. He is so patient. He is so sexy (seriously, I still think he is the hottest guy I have ever met).  He is wise and funny and strong and good, and we are so blessed to have him at the helm of our ship of five.

Happy birthday baby, I love you.

I live in the house my husband lived in while we were dating.  He and his brother bought it as an investment and planned to flip it.  That was in 2003.  Six months before I met him.

When we got married, we bought his brother out and are raising our kids in the same house where our romance first bloomed.

Back then, there were three guys living in the house.  The two brothers and their friend.  The den had these old green couches from his brother’s college days, and I have memories of us curled up on the couch watching t.v. over a decade ago.

I remember the early days, when I first would come over, we’d sit close and our legs would brush and I’d feel this surge of electricity through my whole body.  Sigh.  I was madly in love with him.

I remember holding hands.  I remember him putting his arm around me as I leaned into his chest and breathed in the sensation of new love and romantic chemistry.

I still think he’s the sexiest man alive.

I still can get caught completely off guard by a kiss.  It takes my breath away.

But we don’t do it as much anymore.

The electric currents are rarer because we’re getting dinner on the table and updating our schedules and splitting up the reading homework at night and going to bed completely fried from too little sleep and too much still to do.

This week, I was sitting in the big leather chair when he came in to sit on the couch (a different one now) and watch a little news.  I heard a little voice inside my head saying, you should get up and sit on the couch with him.

See, in the old days, there wasn’t even a stand alone chair in the room.  Just couches (smart single boys).  We wouldn’t have even used a chair if there’d been one though because we wanted to be as physically proximate as we could.

But now, we almost never sit next to each other because one of us is in the chair and one of us is in the couch.  Or we have a lapfull of kids.  Or we’re at the kitchen table and the kids fight over who gets to sit next to mommy and daddy.

So up I got and sat as close as I possibly could get without landing on his lap.  I grabbed his arm and threw it around my shoulder and snuggled into his chest.  After watching the weather, he started flipping channels and landed at the beginning of Rocky III.  I am a HUGE fan of Rocky movies, and he couldn’t help but be amused by the 1980s hilarity of Rocky against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.  We laughed and leaned in and replicated a scene that looked a lot like one from 2004.

Then I attacked him because getting all up in one another’s physical space will do that to you.

Married friends: we have to be more intentional about the romance.  

Everyday romance.

There were no flowers or candlelight or fancy clothes or champagne on this night, but this was romance nonetheless.  I was in an old t-shirt and ponytail, but I felt like the younger version of myself all gussied up and wanting so much for this boy to fall in love with me like I’d fallen in love with him.  I still swoon with slow kisses.  I still feel electricity when I’m pressed up against him.  It is all still there.  We’ve just got to dust it off.

More time on the couch. Less time in the chair.

More time flirting. Less time scheduling.

More time kissing. Less time sleeping.  (It’s worth the trade.)