Marriage, Relationships: Its a Job

About a year after I was married, my cousin asked me to be in her wedding. I accepted. Two weeks later, she called for a heart-to-heart: what’s it like, marriage?

I suppose she wanted to hear that, one year later, there were still butterflies in my stomach, leaping everytime I saw my husband. That we spent every evening joyfully celebrating our marriage over wine, cheese, and strawberries dipped in chocolate.

“Marriage? Its a job,” I responded. “Its a good job, really. One with a lot of rewards and happy moves from one position to another. You get new responsibilities over time. You negotiate. You learn to work with a new member of a team. You learn what works, and what doesn’t.

“Its a full-time job, really. You don’t get a break. And you can’t just quit. You work through rough times and you always, always have more work.

“You really have to work. A lot. You have to work on your relationship all the time. You work to make, and keep, each other happy. And there’s a lot of other work.

“There are plenty of expectations, too. You expect him to be home for dinner. To remember events and occasions. To respond with support and love. And he expects you to be home for dinner (the negotiation part is who is cooking). To remember events and occasions. To respond with support and love. 

“And then there’s the work of those you didn’t marry, but married into. I’m talking about his family and friends. Because you don’t just marry your fiance, you marry everyone that comes with him. And that’s work, too. For both of you. Its a huge part of the job that’s in the fine print. The part you never thought of. Neither did he.”

She interrupted me. “Oh, wow! That’s not at all what I wanted to hear.”

I suppose I was being too honest. She was in planning-moon. She needed the lovey-dovey stuff. So I ended with what a friend told me the night of my wedding: “Take a deep breath. Look around. You’ve been working so hard to make this night so perfect and its going to go really quickly. So take that breath and enjoy it. Try to see it all for what it is. Then let that breath out and enjoy.”

10 years into our marriage, we still need to take that deep breath. Look around. Enjoy the moment. Because in relationships with our husbands, our family, and our friends, there’s a lot of work and the work takes up a lot of our time. When we remember to take the breath and look around, that’s when we can enjoy it.

This post was written in response to the February topic for the Y! Motherboard. We were asked to write about our relationships and how they affect our children. As usual, I went a little off topic.

Here are a few resources from Shine for future reading:

• Your relationship with your spouse should be number one, not your kids….
•  The Recession: How It Changed Relationships As We Know Them (Forever)
• How Can We Repair Our Relationship
• 12 Simple Tips For Relationship Bliss

Tagged as: Love, Marriage, Relationships, Wedding