Virtually everyone is online, and we can sometimes forget that we are real people in real relationships with real issues. Everyone shares their highlight reel, and comparison is the thief of joy. So I want to share our real experience, not just our highlight reel.
While married for only one, my husband and I have been together for seven years. Some people say that nothing changes when you get married, or that marriage is just a piece of paper. In our experience, it is more than that. Marriage does bring change. As soon as our ceremony came to an end, things changed. We both felt this shift, and we talked about it in the following days. It was a subtle shift, but it made a significant impact. We basked in the glow of our post-wedding bliss. It feels like walking on air at first, like there is a visible aura around both of you, and you swear everyone else can see it, too.
Life together is both extraordinary and mundane. You can be your weird, messy selves with each other that no one else ever gets to see. You know you are safe with this person. You didn’t think you could love your person more than you already do, but then they do something that reminds you exactly why you chose to spend forever with them, and you are inundated with the feelings of love all over again.
But it’s not all sunshine and meadows full of roses. Real-life is never so easy.
Some say that the first year of marriage is the hardest. For us, it was no cakewalk. There may be more discord this first year. But you endure. You learn how to work with each other instead of against each other.
During the course of the first several months, you ease into a new normal. There is a sense of permanence. The word ‘forever’ floats around in your mind, and sometimes the weight of it scares you. You realize you married this person— as they are, imperfections included. During heated moments, the word ‘Divorce‘ floats around in your head like a loaded gun. One thing I made my husband promise me prior to getting married was that neither of us would ever threaten divorce. Well, three months later, I was actually the first person to break that promise. In the first six months, we both threatened divorce multiple times. Which wasn’t healthy, but we are human.
You both trigger each other, and this is normal.
Your spouse can trigger traumas that you thought you had dealt with. Maybe they even trigger trauma you didn’t even know you had. Your spouse is the one person capable of triggering you in a way that no one else can.
At first, you may not even understand or recognize your triggers. When triggered, you both resort back to old patterns. You do what you learned to do a long time ago in order to cope and what you had learned back then is not always necessarily healthy. In those moments, self-preservation is paramount, and right now, you don’t know any other way. For some—like my husband—this can be shutting down. And for others—like me—it can be an all-encompassing wave of emotion that just pours out, drowning out all logic and reasoning. And when you bring these two people together, it can be cataclysmic.
Eventually, you are able to identify your triggers and catch yourself when you are about to react instead of respond. You come to understand why you both are the way you are and why you think the way you do. You understand that you come from different backgrounds and different families. And you can then finally meet in a place of mutual understanding and make each other feel heard and validated, leading to true intimacy.
None of this is done effortlessly, though. It is hard work to heal old wounds from your past and change patterns that have been ingrained in your families for copious generations.
But you want to break the cycle, so you can be the best you can be for each other.
Perhaps all of this is common sense for some people. Perhaps for others, it is something to be learned. And that’s okay. We had to learn this. And sometimes, those of us that did not grow up with healthy communication/attachment styles and struggle with trauma and mental illness may need help. All of the progress we have made has been possible for us through Marriage Counseling.
Therapy does not have to be scary, and even the couples who appear to have it all together can benefit from it. We are now able to effectively communicate about hard things outside of counseling and continue to make each other feel validated. We don’t make ultimatums or threaten our marriage. This doesn’t mean that we don’t still become frustrated with each other sometimes or trigger each other. The difficulties are now far easier to navigate.
We are in a much better place now than we were when we started counseling seven months ago, but we still go to counseling, and we don’t see ourselves stopping any time soon. We both enjoy it, and we both get so much out of our sessions. We sometimes go in with a plan of what we would like to discuss and then end up going a different route entirely. I actually love when that happens.
Pro Tip: Marriage Counseling/Couples Therapy is covered by insurance if it is billed as individual counseling, and there are therapists out there willing to do that.
This year has laid the foundation for the rest of our marriage. We are both endlessly grateful for this first year of marriage and everything we have learned about ourselves and about each other. Our marriage is far from perfect, but it is real. I love my husband more than I ever have, and I know he feels the same.
