Sunday, January 2, 2011

Love and Marriage

It's a delicate thing isn't it? I don't think I really understood the fragility of marriage until we had the kids.  Really, until the kids got to be around 6 months old.  That first few months (despite colic) were a lot of just rocking a baby to sleep.  Constantly.  I really didn't find it challenging.  Not for mine and Joe's relationship anyway.  It's when they started to move and when we started scheduling Charlie's surgeries that things started to feel stressful. 

I know (and understand) that a lot of people want to paint over the ugly stuff.  Or at least keep it private.  And I'm certainly not all about sharing every detail of my personal life with people.  But I know that when it's gotten hard with the babies or with Joe, I would've been happy to find more people talking about how they deal with it or just venting in general so I wouldn't feel so...alone.  A lot of the frustration we deal with, with the kids and with each other comes out of sheer exhaustion.  It's really hard to seperate what's bratty, cranky behavior (I am the QUEEN of this), and what's an actual issue that needs to be worked out.  And here's the thing about why kids make marriage harder: where's the time?  Where is the time you need to actually work things out?  In our house, if we're tense with each other, we know we have to make it wait till we get the kids in bed because we arent going to bicker in front of them.  But by the time bedtime rolls around, we've been working from 6am to 8pm and we're waaaaaay too tired to try to talk about anything serious.  And thats where the trouble really is.  I think Joe and I are more than the average couple.  I think we have a really nice balance.  We have tempers, but we don't push buttons.  Neither of us are too stubborn to apologize.  We don't like to go to bed angry.  We always say "I love you".  And I guess it's that little bit of maintenence you HAVE TO do that keeps it working.  Some days are better than others.  I've been sick all week so I've been an absolute pill to be around.  I hate that I get that way.  I'm such a baby, though.  And for a lot of mommies, you know, mommies can't get sick.  I mean you can, but be ready to suck it up.  You have to keep going.  It's one of the harder things I've had to learn.  Kinda silly, yeah?

This past month, I think, has been the hardest month for Joe and I.  This isn't to say we're in trouble.  We aren't at all.  We've just had to make a lot of sacrafices with our time together.  In fact, we've been in seperate houses for the majority of the holidays, in order to keep the kids from getting each other sick or getting Charlie frustrated with Davey while she's healing.  It's been hard to not have the ability or place or time to communicate things.  We have text message sometimes, but thats almost worse than any communication at all.  When you're tired and sensitive the context can go anywhere it wants to. 

I guess, at the end of the day, we always come back together.  No matter what happened during the day.  Seperate or together.  We pour our tired bodies into the bed and say "I love you".  And sometimes that's all we need to keep it going.  At least until the next day.  We have hugs to recharge us and moments where we can thank each other for doing the dishes or changing a diaper.  We fight, but we make up within 10 minutes.  As the kids get older and more independent our house will change, our time will change, and we'll have that time we need.  We get by.  And, most importantly, those "I love you"'s are absolutely the most sincere "I love you"'s you could hear.

We really, truly, absolutely love each other.



7 comments:

  1. aw maggie. this is great, true, and made me tear up. <3

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  2. Are you living inside my head (and marriage?!) Other than having two little ones running around our house, that's pretty much like our marriage. But I've discovered that nothing makes me feel better in the whole world than when P hugs me and tells me he loves me. And i can tell that's how you and Joe are. :)

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  3. Maggie! Love your blog. Wish we could go for coffee and talk. You are not alone. (Isn't that a song by Michael Jackson? King Pop knew what he was talking about.)

    Getting to know another person day in and day out is the hardest and most wonderful thing I have ever tried. Wouldn't give it up for anything.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Sarah H.

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  4. I'm glad you all responded! And I'm glad to read it's common! I figured it was. Life is too stressful for any of us to have a constant sunny, happy marriage, kids or no kids. I mean, I think a happy marriage, a truly happy marriage, requires the bumps in the road. It's a series of tests we all pass or fail. It's great to have a partner, though. You're all beautiful ladies who deserve the happy lives you have :)

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  5. This was beautiful Maggie.
    Again your honesty shines through, and that's what people are so attracted to in you. Among other things of course, but I love how honest you are. It's hard to feel alone in a sea of "perfect" couples, and that's what we see everyday whether on tv, film, the internet. I know it's not real, and I know that I am just as much of a culprit as others. For me it's hard letting the world know I am vulnerable. I don't mind if Nathan knows, but the world is a whole another story.

    Nathan and I have gone through many ups and downs. It's what I love so much about our marriage though. I am a scaredy cat in every sense of the word. I always think something bad is going to happen usually related to me being left alone in the world. And, in those moments he is brave. And, when he get's emotionally down I stand strong. I have found it's all about balance. There is never a time in our marriage where we have been exactly 50/50 but we balance it out with 40/60s and 70/30s and sometimes 10/90s. You do what you have to do to make it work, and a lot of times for us, too it comes down to a long hug and those three words.

    You and Joe are so strong, and you are growing beautiful strong babies. That's amazing.

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  6. carey - it's funny, but i really think modern technology, over anything else, is what's killing the modern marriage. we've created multiple places for people to cheat, we've made it too easy to get in and out of relationships by completely redefining what's important in a marriage (ya know, like the stuff AFTER the big party you throw called a wedding). we have too many things to compare ourselves to. too many standards that aren't even real. if we all knew that it was really hard even for the happiest of couples, i think a lot of us would survive marriage a little better. my parents divorced when i was 7 and there was a lot of bitterness in that divorce. and a lot of my hang ups come from that. i feel bad that joe married my 7 year old self sometimes. it's hard to make the demons leave. i have that same fear of abandonment as you. and joe, like nathan im sure, looks at me like im about crazy to think he'd leave me. we're both lucky to have husbands with patience. and they're both lucky to have us :)

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