Marriage is hard. Just ask anyone who's been divorced. It's hard and it's frustrating and it's demanding. And I sometimes wonder what it is that keeps a couple married and tears a couple apart. All my mulling over has brought me to one simple word: expectations.
Wednesday night, I met up with my gorgeous, wonderful book-club friends at the new Megaplex Theatre in South Jordan to see "The Break-Up" with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. The main thought I carried away from the movie is that I could have just started a fight with my husband, and I would have ended up with the same feelings and in the same place as I was in when I left the theatre. I have to admit that I was a little agitated over all the yelling and arguing and fighting. And then I was further disturbed with the fact that my husband and I have said a lot of those exact things to each other. Such as, "Why don't you want to help me around the house" or "You do nothing but nag me" or "You should start working out" or watching my husband playing video games. I'd heard them all before floating around my own house. And I understood Brooke wanting out of that relationship. I've felt the same way before.
But haven't we all? Most of us have said most of these things to our significant others and well, some of us are still together and some of us are not. And I think it all boils down to our expectations: Are you expecting to grow old with this person? Are you willing to fight through the tough times to when life becomes peaceful again? Will we run? I'm not saying that my marriage is perfect. It's not. Of course it's flawed. I work at it every day, as does my husband, and it's a work in progress. Perhaps someday we'll stop fighting, but I doubt it. And sometimes I wonder how it is that I've been married for seven years and I still don't have my husband figured out.
But if I stop and remember back to the two and a half years I dated my husband in college, I know that a lot of our relationship thrived on arguing and debating with each other and challenging each other and making up. We've always had the kind of relationship that actually runs on fighting. In a way, it's an integral part of our marriage. It's part of what makes our marriage, as long as we keep it at a distance, in a place where it doesn't break it.
I still have a lot of learning to do. I am selfish sometimes, so is my husband. But we love each other, and we're working and working and working, and my expectation is that some day, many years down the road, we will be sitting on our front porch, rocking in wicker chairs, and arguing over each others families or that damned pile of clothes at the foot of the bed that he just won't pick up. Yeah, it's a long journey, but it's one I'm willing to fight for.
