Sunday, September 2, 2012

What Marriage Is Really Like


Marriage 

We have been asked a million times, "How's married life?" and it's my favorite question to answer. Marriage is nothing like I thought it would be. I always pictured being married to be like it is in the movies, perfect, and it is the furthest thing from it. But it's the imperfections of life that make it so fun. It's burning breakfast until the smoke alarm goes off and laughing about it, and trying to open a bottle of champagne in the kitchen and having it explode everywhere and laughing about it, and walking to the grocery store and buying too much and dropping everything along the way of walking back home and laughing about it. We have laughed through everything in our marriage and I am so thankful for it. We wake up making each other laugh, and go to sleep making each other laugh. I revel in these times of laughter and have found it's an essential key to making the Marciniak household thrive.

We have been married for about 3 1/2 months and it still feels so surreal. For 17 months we have waited to be joined as one and we did everything possible to prepare for marriage and I firmly believe it has made the transition into married life so much easier and so filled with joy. It's a running joke that we had about 10 different marriage counselors in our year and a half long engagement and it help us prepare for the hard times. It helped us see that the little things that annoy us and upset us are not worth the fighting and anger that they can bring out. 

In our few months of being married we have discovered these few quirks about each other: 

Tommy
-Never closes the shower curtain when he's done showering, but now it's a joke and when he does remember to close it we sing a song and do a little dance
-Leaves his shaving cream bottle on the counter and it always leaves a ring around it


Jasmine
-Likes to hit Tommy in the face in the middle of the night while we are sleeping
-Doesn't like to keep the door open when she showers so it gets really foggy when Tommy is trying to see himself in the mirror to shave

It's the little quirks of each other that make us laugh and realize that getting mad over the stupid things isn't worth it. We are learning to apologize quickly, and being right isn't worth the cost of hurting your spouse. 

One crucial lesson we have learned in our dating/engagement/married life is to never ever put your spouse down publicly, and never correct them in front of others. I definitely struggle with this more than Tommy and I have learned that it doesn't matter if what he is saying is completely wrong, just agree with him no matter what. It's a respect thing for guys and I never knew how hurtful it was to correct Tommy in front of our friends and family over the most insignificant things. If any of you have ever struggled with this, you know how challenging it is to overcome, but you can do it! Just think of how great your spouse will feel when they know you respect them in front of others.  

I undeniably am no expert in marriage, and even though things are easy now, we know the hard times will come and to cling to each other and cling to Jesus when they do, but I am so thankful for my husband and I love to brag on how awesome he is (he says he hates it when I do but I’m not sure if that’s accurate J).

We have also discovered that we have to be careful about who we tell our wonderful marriage stories to, because unfortunately there are people out there who speak negatively over marriage and who keep telling us that the ‘good feelings’ will end and we will soon hate each other. I pray for these people to find joy in their marriage and to stop berating others in their times of joy.

We also wanted to say thank you to all of you guys who have been praying for our marriage and us. We feel your prayers all around and we love having an awesome support system surrounding us.


 Love,

The Marciniaks!