Before Dave and I got married, my dad tried to explain to me that as a couple we would become more than the sum of our parts, that as we got to know each better we would work better together. Since I played softball as a kid I had an inkling of what he was talking about – I cover 2nd base, you take 1st – but didn’t realize that Dave and I were walking onto a field where our positions were mostly unassigned. Who washes the dishes on Friday? Who will take care of the laundry? What’ll happen when the car needs fixing? In the first few months, we started figuring it out, and the creaky new gears started getting oiled in the right spots. I don’t worry about the bills getting paid and Dave doesn’t worry about groceries every week; I’m this piston, he’s that wire, and this is how our machine works. A machine will output error messages such as “XrtlP45x” and you’ll have to speak it’s language to understand how to fix it; just like Dave has figured out that when I say, “I had such a bad day I can’t see straight,” my error message really means “I need a hug and an ice cream cone”. We’re learning how our Marriage Machine works and how to speak each other’s language, and it is satisfying rewarding work.
Marriage is:
Like Popping Zits:
After an hour-long conversation in the car with Dave, I realized the relief I felt after talking everything out was the same feeling I have when I drain a big pimple. This is the grossest and most effective way I can illustrate what marital conflict is like. Everyone who's endured adolescence knows the different classes of pimples: the surface whiteheads, the simple but deeper blackheads, and then - The MegaZit. It hurts, it's bright red, it's perched on the tip of your nose, and you have to wait 3 days before it's ready for you to do anything about it. And the more potato chips and HoHo's you ingest, the more frequently and grotesquely do you break out. But think about it: there are the "whitehead" moments, where you ask each other nicely to please stop leaving cups all over the living room because it's irritating. Then the "blackhead" arguments, at which point you have to talk through your annoyance and a schedule of dish days so that we have spoons when we need them and the apartment doesn't smell like old hamburger fat. And The MegaZit incidents: over a period of a few days little annoyances snowball into little grudges that can't quite be articulated until - finally! - the frustrations come to a head, and after an hour of honesty and emotional outlet the pressure and soreness is gone. Zits are unavoidable in every sense, but can easily be managed: wash daily with affection, scrub often with honesty and openess, and make sure your time together is nutritious.
The Life-Long Tuning of a Well-Oiled Machine:
Kickstarted By Adventures:
There are few things I find as satisfying as sitting next to Dave in a conversation and being able to turn and say "Remember the time when....?" Those adventures, and the stories of those adventures, create unbelievably strong tethers for the relationship and the more there are the better. The week after we returned from our honeymoon, I made it my project to immediately print out the pictures and put nine of them in one of our brand new frames. Pictures of the starfish we found, and kayaking with the alligators, and riding the scooter in St. Augustine are all in there. And the first month or two of our marriage was rough - we got back from worry-free paradise to a hopelessly-dissheveled apartment, an impending quarter of school, and our part-time jobs on top of that. But those pictures, those memories, acted as a steel cable guideline in the midst of our first storms reminding us of how much fun and goodness can be in our relationship. We just went on an adventure this past weekend, driving four hours to a shoot in Kentucky and camped with 15 other gun enthusiasts, and effectively attached another strong tether for our relationship. It'll be even stronger when I get to later say, "Remember that time at the Kentucky shoot around the campfire when they pranked the snoring guy with the cherry-scented dildo?"
Strangely Inexplicable:
The point of these particular posts is, to the best of my ability, shed light on the workings of marriage and show the hope and humor that exists in it one snapshot at a time. I look back to before I was married and wish people had given me a better picture of what to expect. I must be forgiving, though, because it's almost impossible to adequately describe to the unmarried what being married is like; just like hitting a home run or traveling to a different country, you really can't know the experience until you've done it yourself. And there's also the wonderful fact that every single marriage is a unique structure, the intricate particulars that grace its basic frame never to be duplicated again; this wonderful fact compounds the problem of explaining "Marriage" in the general sense to another. But I can tell you the essential materials: determination, gratitude, laughter, love, and humility. And assure you that, done right, it is good.
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