What is it about marriage that makes us crazy? act crazy? think crazy? be crazy? Boy, it sure is TOUGH! As a child, you read that after you find Prince Charming, you live Happily Ever After! The beauty of Fiction! Fairy Tales! Certainly not the real life things we encounter from day to day. It gets worse when there's financial troubles. Notice how happily ever after applies to those characters being swept away by some Royal Prince Charming? Ha! Easy for him to promise her the moon! He's got his Dad's kingdom to bank on. But what about the rest of us who have to manage what we have and what we don't have?
Ten years of being married has really taught me that happily ever after is a journey and not a destination. And along the way, there will be setbacks. There will be tough times. There will be times of no money. There will be many times of arguing back and forth. But it these things will always be there, sometimes everyday. But we've learned to choose our battles. We've learned to figure out when to stop and when to bring it up again. And this is constant. It runs on a plane of infinity, constantly arising on so many occassions.
It took a few years to figure out how to fight fair. During the years, we established rules in how to argue.
1. We will agree that there will be things that we will disagree about.
2. We agree to RESPECT each other by NOT throwing foul language around, or calling each other names during an argument.
3. We agree that there will be NO PHYSICAL HARM of any kind given to each other.
4. We agree that we will give each other the chance to speak their mind without being interrupted, and LISTEN to what he/she has to say.
5. Say sorry. When you're wrong, you're wrong. But when you're right, sometimes, your delivery is wrong. Apologize for that, it makes a big difference.
6. Sometimes, it's okay to go to bed angry. When you wake up in the morning, you realize that you were exhausted the night before, and that caused your arguments to be worse than what they were. And when you do realize that, take a moment and start the discussion with a hug.
There is a place called Utopia, that we are always in search of. I've found out along the way that Utopia is here. That if we take a step back, we will realize that we are living in it. We can learn to be happy with what we have, and not seek happiness in what we don't have. We learn to look into each other's eyes and find that ourselves swept away the same way when wefirst exchanged "I Do's."
My cousin-in-law, who has three wonderful girls gave us a great piece of advice a long time ago. She said, "Just talk, even if you just talk late at night. Just keep talking and listening to one another." I can't thank her enough for those words of wisdom. For when we argue, we do a lot of talking. But once we start talkng and listening, then that is the start of something good.
