Marriage is not a fairy tale. You start out full of hope – he makes you laugh. You think your love will conquer all, that love is all you need, and you’ll live happily ever after. You are wrong.
Within your first year he still makes you laugh, but you realize those little things you found annoying but bearable, like dirty underwear on the floor or the toilet seat up when you sit down to pee, are not so bearable while your bum is falling into the ice-cold toilet bowl in the middle of the night. By the seventh year, your young children are pulling you both in all directions and demanding your time; and while you have joy and laughter, you’re both sleep-deprived and short-tempered at times. By the 10th year, most of the time you two spend in bed involves less sex, less laughter, and more arguing and snoring. One of you might begin thinking it would be much easier to start a new life, away from the sight of dirty dishes and piles of laundry, the sound of nagging, and the feeling that the love has weakened and perhaps this is how it will be for the rest of your life…maybe you should leave. If you’re lucky, you’ll hesitate for a day. If you’re luckier, you’ll remember the laughter and hold off for a few weeks. If you’re luckiest, you’ll decide to work through the hard times and seek out professional help to repair and rebuild. There will be tears. There will be arguments. The children will hear you raise your voices and will see you cry. You might wonder if things will ever go back to the way they were. They won’t.
But accepting that things will never be the same may become the beginning of something new. One night, out on a date assigned by the marriage counselor, instead of realizing that you’re looking across the table at a stranger and getting a sinking feeling in your heart, you might realize you’re sitting across the table from a stranger and feel a quickening in your heart – who is this person and what are they thinking? What are their interests and what do they dream about? Do your interests and dreams align? You’ll find new things to make you smile and eventually laugh. Since this person is new to you, you’ll search for novel ways to entertain him. He will do the same. Because you’re both strangers, you’ll be polite. You’ll speak carefully and try to be considerate of his feelings. Sometimes you’ll remember sad times or past anger and it will boil over into confrontation, but you’ll both want to hold on to the new pleasure in your new lives, so you will start over. A year will pass and the new you will feel more secure. Your children will see you holding hands and having conversations. They will see you supporting each other and working to keep the family healthy.
By the 15th year, just when things are going great, your marital issues might take a back burner to the emerging teenager issues in your children. After butting heads with teenaged fury, you might turn to each other and find strength and solidarity. More importantly, he still finds ways to make you laugh and you hope that this stage will eventually pass. You both realize that you must take great care to nurture your relationship so you can both see this through and come out on the other side still holding hands.
Three months before your 18th wedding anniversary, you might find a lump in your breast. Suddenly you’re faced with losing everything. You look back and recognize that every moment you spent with him, even the painful ones, were precious. You feel desperate to live so you can have more of those moments. So, you fight. You fight crippling fear. And he is there next to you, holding your hand, making you laugh, helping you fight through the pain. He is with you as you both fight for your life. And when you have no more strength or hope, he gives you his. Each surgery becomes less fearful. Each time you wake up in a hospital, he is there with a cool cloth for your forehead and kisses for the rest of you. He reassures you that you’re beautiful inside and out, no matter what happens to your body. And he can’t help himself – he makes you laugh. You laugh until your stitches hurt, you laugh through your tears, and you laugh until you are healed.
In the second decade of your marriage, you could find yourself embarking on a new journey. You’ve given half of your life to your children and it’s time to take care of yourself. Your dream is big, and you know there will be sacrifices. You go back to school. You begin to feel a sense of déjà vu as dinners fall by the wayside and laundry starts piling up. The arguing begins and you wonder if maybe this time around things may not end well. You remember his unhappiness earlier in the marriage, when times were tough and he wanted to escape, and you’re filled with dread. What you don’t remember is that he’s not the same man you married. Time has changed him into a man who wants what’s best for you and the decades have forged in him a strength of character that would make sure your dreams come true. To your delight, he rolls up his sleeves and folds the laundry. Every time you turn around there are fresh flowers in a vase on your desk and handwritten loving post-its stuck on your computer. To your amazement, he’s a fantastic chef and he brings you your dinner while you are studying at your desk, many times accompanied by glasses of champagne. And to your astonishment, he considers it reasonable to contemplate a time in the near future when you will attend graduate school in a different town when you might have to drive several hours just to steal a weekend with each other. His exciting plans to sneak away from the house and race through the night have you giggling like you’ve just started dating.
Marriage is not a fairy tale. You start out full of hope – he makes you laugh. You think your love will conquer all, that love is all you need, and you’ll live happily ever after. You’re wrong. The prince doesn’t wake the princess with a simple kiss, he shakes her awake and she’s grumpy and she might have bad breath and she doesn’t know his name and they have to take time to get to know each other and maybe just maybe they have a chance to truly fall into genuine love. Even then, they don’t immediately go riding off into the sunset without a care in the world. First, they must fight through a wall of thorns, side-by-side, bleeding and crying. Love doesn’t fight thorns. Willpower, grit, and patience get you through that. There might be dragons to slay and fire to fight. Love doesn’t help you fight dragons, courage does. What love does is fuel all of that willpower, grit, patience, and courage. Love is not the How, it’s the Why. Only after all of that, scarred and older, do the prince and princess have a chance for a ride into the sunset and a happy ending. Marriage isn’t a simple fairy tale, it’s an epic legend.
Happy 23rd Anniversary, Markus. I love you!
Letters From Narnia 