First, you need to be warned. One because I'm doing this off of my phone which usually calls for at least 5 spelling errors. Just ignore those. And secondly, because this is just ramblings, raw and real. So, take it for what it is.
Before I got married, or engaged, or even dated, I always heard that marriage was hard. Ya, okay...marriage is hard. But what does that even mean to a girl who has never been married? I can say Romania was so heartbreaking, but you will never really understand exactly what I mean by that because you have never experienced exactly what I did. I can say that school is stressful, but you don't know exactly what "stressful" encompasses from my perspective. Simply because you. are. not. me. And I actually love that. That we are all unique and one-of-a-kind individuals. We all experience life in our own kind of way, and while that may seem lonely at times, I find it fascinating that I am me, and no one in history will ever live the life I live, or be the person that I am, except for me.
With that being said...lets go back to the "marriage is hard" thing. Obviously I thought I understood that marriage was hard before I got married, but it never had meaning or substance to me. But now that I'm married, I get it.
And the more I think about it, the more I hate that saying "marriage is hard". What does that even mean?! The word hard can be used to explain so many things. School is hard. Eating vegetables is hard. Jawbreakers are hard. Lifting 500 lbs is hard. Getting up in the morning is hard. Death is hard. Being addicted to ice cream is hard. The floor in my house is hard. Hard hard hard. It can be used in so many different ways with so many different meanings. So when someone says "marriage is hard", one might be referring to their husbands video game addictions. Or when someone says "marriage is hard" because the have a wife with a spending problem. Or someone might say "marriage is hard" because it's not rainbows and butterflies all the time. Or maybe they say it just because it is simply something different from what they are used to.
What is one even supposed to think when someone tells them that marriage is hard? I mean really, there can be a million interpretations. It's such an abstract concept for me.
But here's what I'm getting at, because I am me, and because my marriage is something that is 100% concrete and comprehensible to me, I'm going to interpret what "marriage is hard" has been for me personally. I am no expert at marriage, by any means, but I think what I'm experiencing is something that can be somewhat relatable to you newly weds out there. And for you singles, I'm hoping to enlighten your minds....I think marriage gets a bad rep with all this "marriage is hard" talk going on.
This is marriage to me.
1) not wanting to get up in the morning knowing you won't see your spouse until school and work is over -yup, that's hard for me.
2) merging his independent life and my independent life into one life - suddenly we have a person that needs to know where we are all the time, what money we spend, and what our day consists of -yup, hard.
3) he wants you to be happy, you want him to he happy....but sometimes, you can't have both. Someone has to sacrifice. Hard, hard, hard.
4) birth control gets the best of me - that's emotional wreck stuff I'm talking about. Hard.
5) we know each other so well, and because of that we make each other the happiest. But we also make each other the most frustrated and most sad, but also the most giggly and most fun. Hard? Sometimes.
6) marriage is so new, and heck, you're not good at it right off the bat. But I think we thought that we would be really great at it, right from the get-go. Why? Because we were good at love. And so we automatically assumed we should be good at marriage. And we weren't, and still aren't perfect- so that's hard.
7) it's so tempting to come home during Sunday school and eat food and lay on that mattress that's still in our living room and take a nap snuggling - wow...super hard.
And really, a million other things.
But seriously. Marriage is the best thing. All this hard talk is crazy. Ya, I can't deny that there's tricky days and crying eyes and frustrated sighs...but that's life. I think I automatically assume hard means bad. But hard is good. Remember that unique life stuff I was talking about earlier? Unique doesn't come from perfect lives, it comes from hard, crazy, funny, frustrating times that define who you are. And a unique marriage? Yup, comes from those hard, crazy, funny, frustrating times as well. But the best part? You have someone to share it with and you have something that defines the "us" aspect of your life.
So yes, marriage is hard. But what I think people mean by that is this...marriage is unique, it's something that can't be understood until its experienced, it's unexpected, it's emotional, its different for every human being, and you know what? Can't really be explained in a really long blogpost. And hey, if "hard" is the word we use to explain all that, then so be it. I'm not trying to change social norms here peeps! Just speaking my mind here, just speaking my mind. But remember, hard is good. No matter what "hard" encompasses.
