I wanted to have a bit of a brag about how awesome my marriage is, and how lucky we are to have each other. I know ours is relatively young in terms of marriages, but we gotta good thing going on.
Jared and I met on Tinder in 2015. He was one of the few who was capable of holding a conversation, and one of the fewer who offered to take me out for dinner.
On the night of our first date I was running late and he was very punctual (a continuing pattern). I messaged him to say I'd be at the restaurant in 5 mins, and proceeded to hurriedly put my make up on in the car.
He saw me message him from the park bench he was sitting on, and the cheeky shit came and jumped in my car and introduced himself while I was doing my make up!
We had a delightful dinner, I got a bit tiddly from a couple of glasses of wine, and then we went back to his place where he delivered the promised massage.... And a few other things. I ended up staying there all weekend, and we had a delightful time, and have been nigh inseparable since. We moved in together about 6 weeks later, and bought a house together in December 2015.
Despite life's ups and downs, life is pretty easy with Jared. We're coming up 5 years together, and I marvel at how easy it is to be with him.
I think it would be easy to look at us and think we're just lucky, that our smooth sailing is by chance. Certainly it is that in part, we're both pretty easy going people, but there's a few intentional factors that make life together smoother than it could otherwise be.
15 things I love about our marriage
1. We talk about everything. Early and honest is our philosophy. We nip any problems in the bud, address stuff straight away, and move on. We both prefer frank honesty, with tact, being super mindful of each other's feelings, but saying what needs to be said. There's no silent treatment, no mind reading expectations, no petty bullshit. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, and assume things were not intended as a personal attack.
2. Neither of us are very good at holding a grudge. I'm forgetful, Jared is ambivalent. In terms of festering sores, this is an anti-bacterial solution.
3. We both have a healthy amount of self awareness. We know when we need time alone, time together, people time, fun, down time, play, sleep, food, adventures etc, and knowing ourselves well, means we can tell the other person what's really going on, and what we need or want. Sometimes it also involves admitting that we don't know and then we can brainstorm together.
4. We both know our foibles and work to minimise them. He's not so much with effort or opinions, but will put in effort when I ask. I'm a chronic over-planner and create near-unachievable plans which eventually make life un-fun for both of us. He will help me pull off ridiculous plans that require more work than I can do alone, but conversely, I'm also working on planning less, doing less, enjoying downtime and embracing my inner introvert.
I err naturally towards being domineering and dictatorial, but I know this and always seek his opinion instead of carte blanche making a decision. He will invent opinions so it looks like he cares, because he knows I value his input.
5. Sex. We have a lot of it. With each other, with others, while watching porn, we are sexy people. We talk about it, we try new things, but we are also happy with boring same samey sex.
6. We can be quiet together. He's busy on Reddit rn, while I'm writing a blog post in House of Pegas restaurant in Brno, Czech Republic.
7. We are both of our favourite people. He feels like home. Our wedding vows said:
I take you to be my husband/wife. I promise to choose you every day, to love you in word and deed, to do the hard work of keeping our love alive everyday. To laugh with you, cry with you, grow with you, and create with you. To be your family and your partner in all of life’s adventures. Loving what I know of you and trusting what I don’t yet know, I give you my hand. I give you my love. I give you myself.
We chose these words because it mentioned being each other's family, and also adventures. We may or may not have kids, so it was important to us from the outset that 'us' was family enough.
8. We are willing to do shit the other person likes because we love them. I love Jared so I will go to watch American football with him. He will point out shiny things, and help me choose awesome earrings when we're out and about because he knows I'm a human magpie. He reads my blog posts because he knows I love writing, and offers helpful insights.
I studied couples for a long time after my parents divorced, trying to learn what a good relationship looks like, and this one I learned from my cousin Ang and her hubby BJ. His mantra was I love her, I love what makes her happy, I love that she loves that, so yes I love x thing.
9. Independence is encouraged - pls be the best version of yourself and do what makes you happy, even if that includes no longer being with me.
There's always been an open door policy on our relationship, which means each day there's a choice to stay, rather than a need or an obligation.
We work on the premise of 'If this relationship is causing you to not be the best version of yourself, let's talk about why, see if it can be fixed, but if it comes to it, I love you enough to let you go.'
I have massive trust issues in regard to others, and with myself to a certain extent, so I have always been a flight risk. This freedom to leave at any point actually made me feel safe enough to stay in the beginning, and my fear of being trapped abated.
10. We have shared values - we have largely the same life ethos. We both agree that the 'not being a dick' part of religion is important, but the church part? Not so much. We have similar political and environmental stand points. We both have little tolerance for the social and political bullshit in the world. We have both been raised to be considerate and kind and give people the benefit of the doubt. Finding all that in another human is pretty awesome.
11. We want each other, not need each other. Financially, socially, emotionally we can live without the other person, but choose not to. We openly acknowledge that we can both live without the other person, but life is better, a million times over, with them.
12. We want to change the world in the same ways. We watched the movie Lion and we both wanted to adopt 12 children. We are itching to plant some trees according to the scientific map of the best places to plant them. We are trying to rid the world of single use plastics and mindful of our carbon footprint. We are currently considering which charities to be giving to, but something that helps with homelessness is integral, as seeing homeless people all around town every day pulls on both our heart strings. (Political revolution might be the best tool for that yet tho...)
13. We share a love of knowledge. Jared reads random stuff on the internet obsessively. I'm a book worm. We both love documentaries. We trade notes on which podcasts we've listened to in a day and sometimes listen to history podcasts while hike. Jared knows crazy amounts of useful and less useful things, and I have very high emotional intelligence.
14. We play to each others strengths. Jared is really good at strategic thinking, I'm really good at making goals and having big epic plans. I love entertaining, and he will tolerate it for as long as he can before he needs to escape and do this introvert thing.
15. We are both aware that one person cannot meet all your needs.
Let's be real. Husbands do not make the best shopping buddies and wives do not make the best sports watching buddies, generally speaking. Jared is pretty phenomenal at being the 'little black dress' of husbands - wear with anything to any occasion - he has his limits.
The expectations on spouses has always been big, but I think the way that we now expect one person to complete us is a huge burden for one person to bear and it sets up the marriage for failure, imho.
If the core attributes of a marriage are these (according to us, in no particular order):
1. Friendship, confidant
2. Sexual partner
3. Financial partner
4. Co-parent
5. Flatmate - co-habiting
6. Adventure buddy
7. Cheerleader
Then that's a big load to be expecting of one other person, or to be giving all that to another person. I can't speak for everyone, but I thrive by having lots of people in my circle, and gaining lots of different perspectives on life, and having lots of adventures with different people. When I was single I had different people for each of those functions (obvs some of those are less relevant when single), so why would that change when I'm married?
If you're always drawing from the same well it'll run dry, and I think that applies to marriages as well. Leaning too much on one's spouse can make marriage more like a chore, and means you get tunnel vision. It's important to still maintain other relationships with family, community and friends, and for me, have a real good group of extroverted girls to balance me out from my introverted husband.
You wouldn't always be eating the same flavour of ice cream right? So mix it up with your support network too.
For a really long time I didn't think marriage could work or that if it could, I'd ever ever find someone that I could make it work with. Even being so blissfully happily married, I hold it with a loose grip knowing how quickly life can turn on a dime.
But the longer we're together and the more I get to know the wonderful human I am lucky enough to call husband, the more I slowly ease in to the idea that it is possible to be happily married and stay that way.
This post is intended to be like a time capsule, so if ever I get to the stage where I'm taking my marriage or Jared for granted, I can look back on this and remember just how lucky I am.
I hope we stay this way for a long long time.
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