People are always saying marriage is hard. Marriage takes work. Marriage isn’t easy. There are countless self-help books and episodes of daytime talk shows dedicated to this general idea. But if you are married to the right person, I just don’t think it’s true.
Sure, The Accountant and I have only been married for about a year and a half, but we’ve been together five and a half years and have lived together for the past four. Over this time, our relationship has been the easy part. As long as we remember to communicate and be considerate of one another (could it get anymore basic?), marriage isn’t hard – it’s what makes everything else easier.
During my month of unemployment, my wife was my support in every way. On the days that I doubted myself and worried about the future, she was my reassurance. Now that we are getting back on track, we are seeing some big things in our future creep nearer (namely the baby-making and home-buying), and it is the knowledge that we approach these goals as a team that makes them seen attainable. We know that whatever we face, we face it together. What’s better than that?
I found myself thinking about this yesterday, as a great weekend spent together came to an end. The Accountant and I ran errands, explored potential neighborhoods for our first house, went out to dinner, had some great long and detailed chats about the baby-making and house-buying, and spent all day Sunday cooking and cleaning together. My wheels started turning about the “marriage is hard” business.
Recently, for what seems like the millionth time in our relationship, our life changed. This time, it was my new work schedule, and that was hard. But together, we’ve made it easier. The Accountant knows I can’t possibly accomplish all of the housekeeping tasks I used to take care of on weeknights now that I have about half the amount of time to do them. Conversely, I know The Accountant, who gets home later than I do (and I would argue works twice as hard) can’t get all of this stuff done either. And we both know that we can’t afford to just let these things slip by the wayside – otherwise we’d be going broke ordering take-out every night, not to mention losing our minds climbing over piles of dirty laundry to get in and out of our bedroom. So we figured out a new approach together, and are now doing more laundry together on the weekend and cooking on Sunday for the coming week. In the grand scheme of life, this is a small change, but it’s just another instance on a long list of times that our love and care for each other, our marriage, has made a difficult situation easier.
Over the past five and a half years, we have dealt with job changes (good and bad) for both of us, relocated across several hundred miles, spent two years living in a shitty apartment, each coped with homesickness at different times as we searched for our real “home,” planned and paid for our wedding and honeymoon, worked hard to pay off a lot of debt, bought two cars (both with short notice when we just suddenly needed them), lost and gained friends, watched loved ones pass away, handled family drama, and faced some big disappointments – all of that was hard.
But marriage? Spending every day with the woman I love? And maybe just remembering once in a while to cut her some slack for leaving her socks on the floor? Piece of cake.
thiswillbe
April 6, 2009
Aww, what a sweet post. Hear, hear!
mommie2be
April 7, 2009
love it!
The Deviant E
April 7, 2009
I like the sentiment of your post. I’m pro-romance.
But…
I think that the “marriage is hard” trope is probably a useful one. I think we can agree that the vast majority of married people are in straight relationships. Additionally, our wider culture is CONSTANTLY telling women and men that there is no *possible* way they could ever even hope to understand what the other is thinking.
Every sitcom, every soap opera, every movie and book it seems, is all about how women and men are constantly crossing wires, and isn’t it oh-so-humorous when they do! (So long as in the end they get to together and everything works out).
So for people growing up in that environment, one that tells them they won’t ever be able to communicate, one that tells men that they shouldn’t WANT to pay attention to what their significant (female) others feel and do, I think it probably is pretty damn hard to make a marriage work. They’re swimming upstream afterall. (just look at the picture you have up there that says: “how to improve your marriage without talking about it”
And for years people have been told that when they find the right person it’ll just “snap into place”, but where does that leave all the couples who DO have to fight their cultural upbringing?
A lot of the time I honestly feel bad for straight people that they do have to fight so much brainwashing to get into a healthy, communicative relationship. Then I snap back to reality, realizing that they have every single other advantage in their favor.
Anyway, I write a bit about this type of stuff on my blog, so, if this seems interesting, come check it out!
feministhousewife
April 7, 2009
Deviant E – Don’t forget that gay or straight, we all grow up with the same same societal conditioning. I didn’t grow up in a gay vacuum! You could also argue that as hard as it is for straight couples to create their own vision of marriage after all that they grew up learning, so many gay couples didn’t have any example to start with at all! But that isn’t really the point of my post – I am just saying that I think when you are in a good marriage, it is not hard. Sure, for a marriage to work you need to communicate well and always consider each other’s feelings, but when you are with a person you love, respect, and care deeply about, those are pretty easy tasks to accomplish.
The Deviant E
April 8, 2009
I agree, so many gay couples DO need to create something almost entirely new.
I’ve been in straight relationships and queer ones. One straight one that I had (after having identified as not-het for multiple years), probably would have been great, if it wasn’t for the fact that within literally days I started sliding into some strange place where I literally felt like nothing I could do would be the right thing (if I called him, he’d think I was clingy, if I didn’t call he’d think I wasn’t interested). This wasn’t his fault at all. In none of my queer relationships have I ever had the same amount of constant second guessing which came from trying to have a straight relationship.
It seems unfair to then use some type of “True Scotsman” argument for why my queer relationships works and my straight ones haven’t. I don’t think it’s that we didn’t “really” care about each other, but instead that that constant bombardment of expectations about what straight relationships should be like, actually made it harder for a progressive, radical couple of two-non-het identifying people to work.
~TheDeviantE
feministhousewife
April 8, 2009
DeviantE – I thank you for reading and commenting, but I kind of feel like we are having two separate conversations here. My post is not about fighting and resisting social conditioning, it is about my personal belief that our society’s axiom of “marriage is hard” is not true.
Also, the relationship you describe in your comment doesn’t sound like a long-term, committed relationship (if you were at the point of calling vs. not calling). My post is about marriage. In order for a couple to get to the point of marriage, they would have already survived the “Should I call” phase. Dating, getting to know someone and the beginnings of a relationship are completely and totally different from the day to day of being married to someone you have already been through all of those steps with.
I’m really glad that my post was kind of a springboard and you were able to relate it to some of what you say you discuss in your blog. It’s great how blogs can connect people and start dialogues – I just think we are starting to get into an off-topic dialogue here. Thanks again for stopping by and reading!