Finally...the stress from planning the big day was gone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never forget how supported and encouraged I felt
seeing all of our family and friends gathered together in one place, but I was
glad when that day was over. We were finally able to get away and enjoy some
quality time alone, first in a log cabin in the mountains of Tennessee, and
then floating aboard a large ocean vessel about the size of the Titanic in the Caribbean
Sea.
When we arrived back in town two weeks later, the most
stressful thing on my mind was how I was going to personalize the wording on
the 200 thank you cards I needed to write. What was I supposed to say to the
person who gave us the tenth crock pot? “Thank you for the crock pot…it’ll fit
in well with the other nine we already received!”
A couple weeks later, I began my first job with Turner
Construction as a Field Engineer. Don’t let the title fool you; I was nothing
more than the low man on the totem pole of the fifty-man construction
management team. Meanwhile, Amy went back to her job as a Project Engineer at
Marathon Petroleum where she had already been working for a year. How else would
we have been able to afford a wedding?
For the first few months, it was pretty much all butterflies
and roses. Our weekdays were pretty much all the same: we drove an hour in
opposite directions to work, worked between eight and ten hours a day, drove an
hour home, ate dinner, spent some time together, went to sleep and did it all
over again. Our weekends were packed full of wedding hopping. It was great to just
show up with a $50 gift, eat some amazing food, and then go home. But the best
part of being married was that we were finally able to come home to one another
every evening.
I don’t know exactly when the switch flipped; maybe it was
more like a slow fade. But a few months after being married, our relationship
didn’t seem so much like butterflies and roses anymore. Our conversations became
centered on our workdays. Due to our rigorous schedules, we were becoming more
and more exhausted. And we went back to our old habits of being easily irritated
with one another.
What was wrong with our marriage? It wasn’t turning out to
be much like the fairy tales where prince charming rides in on his white horse,
sweeps a beautiful princess off her feet, and rides off into the sunset where
they live happily ever after. Did prince charming and the beautiful princess
have jobs like us? Did they become exhausted like us? Did they get irritated
with one another like us? I don’t know. The movies Sleeping Beauty, Snow White,
and Cinderella all end when the
prince and princess ride off together into the sunset. As observers, we are
left without a clear picture of what happens on the other side of the sunset.
To one degree or another, I think all of us pictured our lives
to look more like the fairy tale Disney movies than like what we have actually experienced.
We thought riding off into the sunset meant bliss for the rest of our lives,
only to find out that there are fiercer dragons out there than the one prince
charming slayed in order to rescue his princess. Some of you thought you would’ve
already ridden off in the sunset a long time ago, but are still waiting for
prince charming to come along and sweep you off your feet.
Whatever your situation, I’m 99.999…% sure your marriage (or
lack thereof) has turned out differently than you thought it would. First, I’m
sorry it didn’t work out like you thought it would. I’m sure you’ve experienced
a lot of pain and frustration like us which you wish you wouldn’t have had to
experience. I wish there was something I could do so that none of us would have
to experience that pain.
I don’t profess to be an expert on how to have a successful
marriage nor would I claim that our marriage is perfect, but Amy and I have
learned a few things both during our first seven years of marriage and from
counseling other married couples which have helped us to have a great, loving
relationship with one another. Over the course of the next five weeks, I will
be sharing five of these “strategies” with you in hopes that you may be able to
apply one or more of them to your marriage.
Before I wrap up, I need to make a couple clarifications.
First, even the best application of our strategies isn’t going to take away all
of the pain. Because you’re a human being who is married to another human
being, the hard reality is that you’re going to hurt one another, whether you
intend to or not. Our strategies aren’t going to take away all the pain. But I
hope that successful application of our strategies will enable you to
experience a deeper, more intimate relationship with your spouse.
My other clarification is that our strategies don’t come in
a template, apply-to-all format. Although I’ll be sharing stories of how we
have applied these strategies in our marriage, that doesn’t mean the exact same
application of these strategies in your marriage is going to give you the same results.
Every person is different, meaning that every marriage is different. What I
hope you’ll get out of the strategies I share is a basic principle which you
can then figure out how to apply in a way that is going to work for you and
your spouse.
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I'm excited to go on this journey with you as we take a look at a few of the struggles many of us are facing in our marriages and attempt to develop some strategies to lessen the struggles. The fifth strategy, which I'll be presenting next week, is: Make Decisions Together. I look forward to connecting with you again next week!
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