Have you ever seen pictures and articles of people celebrating 50 years of marriage and wondered why your marriage isn’t making it to year 5, much less year 50? I always read what they have to say for advice. I mean, I really want to know what the secret truly is to a long-lasting, love-filled marriage.
I’m pretty sure they all started the way ours did. They were love struck young people with thoughts of the perfect life together. They were probably just as filled with the physical attraction as we all were. It’s the way God intended it. There are quite a few passages in the Bible, even one whole book, dedicated to the physical attraction and satisfaction of our bodies in physical union with one another in the marriage bed. If even God talks about it, I’m thinking it’s something to enjoy and not to be seen as taboo or off limits.
But what happens during those 50 years? Many of us got married with hopes that it would always be like it started, butterflies and tingles, flirting and wooing one another. While there are certainly times that those feelings can rule over, life and its many surprises can throw us for an unprepared loop. When struggles for bearing children burden your thoughts, health issues with loved ones drop in unexpectedly, death of those close to you – or, God forbid, a child – financial issues, job losses, wayward children…….
Pick an issue. These things happen and more.
If we have unrealistic expectations of white picket fences and steady income without issues, we will be sorely disappointed and most definitely unprepared to deal with the changes necessary.
When my husband and I started dating, we had both been pretty damaged by previous marriages as well as countless bad dating relationships that brought into our relationship a plethora of defenses and old hurts. We dated for only 8 short months and were married. He had a teen daughter from his first marriage and I had no children but a mind full of ideas of proper parenting (insert extreme eye roll here). We did not explore each of our boundaries and expectations. Our first year of marriage was FILLED to overflowing with arguments and fighting. We didn’t even know how to argue in a healthy way. It was a mess and we are so thankful we made it through to the other side still together.
What I’m trying to say is that we WILL be one of those couples who will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary with so many memories of the time between “peaches and cream” and the celebratory dance 50 years later. We will be sliding into home plate laughing and kissing each other knowing everything we went through to get there.
When friends of mine are dating and thinking that they’ve found “the one,” I usually try to be as encouraging as possible and as real as I can be when asked directly about my experiences. One of my favorite pieces of advice, while somewhat in jest, is a pretty serious suggestion. “Have you had a fight with him yet?” If the answer is no, I suggest picking a fight. Again, it’s mostly in jest. But what I’m really saying is that you really need to know more. You’re still in the “peaches and cream” phase of a relationship. It’s what we hold onto when things get rough. I never lose sight of what that phase looks like so I can reproduce it time and again throughout our marriage. We should always be dating our spouse. The old timers call it wooing. (I’m an old timer, sort of.) Taking the time to clean up, put on some ‘stink pretty’ (as my great-grandmother would call perfume), put on your nice clothing, and go out on a date paying ALL attention to your spouse is oh so very important at the dating phase as it is 10 years in, 20 years in, 50 years in.
But when I’m saying to pick a fight before you decide to marry really is just my way of saying that there is more to know about a person than the initial dating phase can reveal. How will this person treat you when you disagree with them? How will they treat you when you have just given birth and are dealing with post partum depression? How will they treat you when you are struggling to overcome the loss of a parent? No, you cannot know fully how this will go in the beginning of your life together, but you CAN look closely at how they treat their family members or how other family members treat one another. These are all things you’ll have to get through together after the “peaches and cream” phase wears off.
I’m convinced that the reason God instructed us to wait to physically consummate a relationship until marriage is so that we have sex to get us through most of the first year growing pains. It’s never easy putting two adults under one roof and expecting them to get along. Just try it with a good friend being a roommate. Seriously! You’ll have to figure out how to adjust to where he throws his clothes at the end of the day, how he likes the fridge set up, what type of furniture he wants to equip the house with. If all we can do when we are dating is focus on the physical, we won’t have time to talk about those things that matter most. What are his financial goals in life? What are his career aspirations? How soon does he want children? Does he even want children? How many children does he want? Is he a spanking parent? Is he a parent that demands certain sports in his children’s lives? I mean, pick a topic and talk. Just talk. But please talk before you get married.
There are far too many marriages lost to unrealistic expectations. Let’s look at our spouses as partners in life and not the answer to all our problems. Well, most of the readers in this blog are already married. So, what now? You’re married. I’m married. You’ve had unrealistic expectations and they’ve failed you. Now what?
Well, I think the focus certainly needs to be the first thing to change. We have to realize that our husbands aren’t superheroes. I mean, maybe mine is, but not all can be. I’m kidding. He’s my superhero, but he’s certainly not perfect. Neither am I. I’m sharing most of these posts from a failed experiential platform and not one of perfection. We have to look closely at our spouses and see them for what they are. They are human beings. They have hopes and dreams. They have failures in life. They have successes in life. They need the other half of their own selves to be present and supportive to complete them. We jokingly call ourselves their “better halves,” but really have to understand that when we married we became half of a whole marriage unit. We are completely our own and completely a married unit. “They are no longer two, but one flesh.” We have to understand that we cannot just bail on our spouses. It is like we are bailing on our own selves. They need us to be emotionally available, even when they struggle to understand their own emotions.
Then we need to examine what issues are worthy of our concern and what should be left aside as less important. Not every battle needs to be fought. Here’s a real truth bomb: NOT EVERY BATTLE NEEDS TO BE WON. I know it’s great to be right. I know it seems like you need to tell him when he’s wrong and how your methods would be better. But he needs you to build him up more than he needs to be corrected. There are certainly some things that need to be dealt with. Unfaithfulness is a real life problem that cannot continue. Physical and mental abuse cannot be tolerated under any circumstance. But his habit of throwing his sweaty and muddy socks on the floor instead of in the laundry hamper, while intensely maddening and causes you to see him as a spoiled child, does not necessarily need to be addressed with the same………heated passion………that taking weekends away from the family to be with the guys might require. Pick your battles. Give your spouse a break from the wheel of torture he so lovingly calls nagging. Like I said, there are enough real life problems that need to be dealt with.
Choose to be a calm voice of encouragement to your husband. If he knows that when he comes home, he will see you screaming at the kids and slamming doors, yelling to him that the trash needs to be taken out because the science experiment of leftovers under the bed in the teen’s room finally was thrown away, and your exasperation overflows toward him as he walks in the door, he will not be all that excited to hurry home. There will be those time that chaos will happen, but the standard lifestyle in your home can be peaceful if you make an effort to create it.
I noticed my toddler daughter was speaking angrily at us more often a few years ago. I kept yelling at her to stop and telling her as loudly as possible how wrong she was to be acting out like she was. I didn’t notice that I had created that habit in her by yelling at her to begin with. How else was she going to behave except how she saw me behave? Well, of course this would all be explosive when my husband would walk in the door from work. He did not feel a sense of peace in our home. And neither did I. I expressed to him one night as we were headed to bed that I was so frustrated at how things were going and wanted to know what he would do to help. He took a slow, deep breath. He looked me in the eyes and held my hands tenderly. He then told me that my beloved toddler was mimicking my behavior and that unless I changed how I was talking to her, she wouldn’t change a thing. He had noticed the loss of peace in our home and was hoping it would be a personal introspection I would understand without him. But when I asked for help, he was willing to tell me the truth. He took a chance. It was dangerous. Had it been our first year of marriage, OH MAN! I would have lit into him for judging me and how he had no right to tell me anything.
Well, I have to admit that I did go to bed a little angry that night. I didn’t tell him that. But I was awake for a while letting it simmer in my mind. I finally came to the thought that he was right. Our kids really do reflect our behaviors, whether or not we really want to admit it. Well, I made the adjustment and it worked out. It didn’t happen instantaneously. But it did bring about peace in our home again. I had a choice to make and it had to be mine. I chose to let him speak into his other half as if it was his own heart. He took a risk in gently correcting me. It was one of those times he decided to fight for a battle that mattered. Our family mattered. Our marriage mattered. The peace in our home mattered.
We need to be real with ourselves and not only look for the problems in our spouses. It takes two to get married. It takes two to make a marriage work. It also takes two to destroy a marriage. I’d love to say that the only reason either of our marriages failed the first time was because we were married to awful people. But the reality of it is that no matter what I can say about my ex-husband, I had to look at myself first. I had to find out what I had created in our marriage that failed as well as what he had created. I just cannot expect my new marriage (that’s been 13 years so far!) to be successful if I’m unwilling to grow on my own. I’m looking even now regularly at how I can grow as a wife, as a mother, as a teacher, as a blogger, as a friend, and as a Christian.
In the beginning, God created mankind in His image. But when Eve was made of Adam’s rib, Adam said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
Your husband is half of you. You are half of him. We have to learn to work together and meet that 50 year anniversary party with wisdom and joy to share with those around us. Our kids will be the ones to change the world. Let’s give them the tools to do it by showing them how we can make marriages that last the test of time without falling to pieces. It’s too common in this world to give up. I want to be stronger than that. I want to win at the battles that matter.