The Fear I Had BEFORE Marriage
From a Newlywed
By Grace K. Bianco
Don’t get me wrong… Marriage is fantastic. I don’t want this blog to start off sounding like a “Negative Nelly” warning those about marriage. In fact, that’s why I am here writing what I am writing.
Married or not, everyone can agree marriage isn’t always the fairytale movies try to make it out to be. BUT on the flip side, it’s not this terrible lifelong contract that people warn others about.
“Just wait till after the first year…”, “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever have.” , “You haven’t truly seen all sides of each other yet.”, “Ever heard of the seven year hump?”, “What if you get bored of each other?”, “You won’t always like each other, but you will always love each other” “Over 50% of marriages end in divorce in America…”, “Just wait till the honeymoon phase goes away.”, etc.
Those are just some of the general things most people hear when they are about to get married. If you are like me and got married at twenty, you see and hear even more things about getting married too young.
My husband and I started officially dating three weeks after we met. Eight months later, we got engaged. A week and a half after celebrating being together for one year, we got married. So on top of getting married young, we also did it fast.
We are a little over six months into marriage. I have never doubted the choices we made for even a second. I feel as though we have been abundantly blessed in the past few months of marriage. We have had some not-so-good times, but oh my gosh, the good times we’ve had don’t even compare.
I can confidently say that we really are happily married. We love, respect, and trust each other. When we mess up, we always try to do better. We learn to forgive and move forward. Our arguments are for learning not for resenting.
My husband has never given me any reason to believe that he is not the one God made with me in mind. Now, I know everyone is wondering… What was I so scared of?
Back when we were dating, I struggled with thinking that every time we had a disagreement… We would never go back to being 100% again. It was like I was waiting for all the hard stereotypes to just suddenly click, and that would be us for the rest of our lives. This way of thinking never caused more problems, because I kept it to myself. I would simply observe it all on my own.
Fortunately, almost (if not all) disagreements ended with me feeling even more in love. It was something about the way we apologized and moved forward that left me feeling like the two of us could handle anything.
Marriage definitely does complicate things, because you are around each other even more. Finances come together. Choices you make will affect your partner even more now. Life becomes a lot different.
Our disagreements are few and far between, but when they happen, my anxious mind can’t help but think about all the things we were told prior to marriage.
Before getting married, I always found that we were told more negatives than positives. My husband and I would read things or talk to others about marriage together, and when the warnings came up, my husband knew I didn’t like it. It made me shift in my seat. Why was there so much negativity around something that God gave us as a gift?
I don’t believe there should be a dark cloud over marriage. Yes, it is hard. It isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. Getting married doesn’t solve all of your relationship’s problems. There are some naive people who need to hear that, but there are many others who need to hear about the beauty of it all.
There is nothing like the sleep you get every night knowing your wife / husband is soundly sleeping next to you. You no longer deal with balancing the chores and work needed to thrive by yourself. When good things happen, you always have someone who is right there waiting to jump up and down with you. When you are sick, you have someone who will run to the store to get you medicine. You come home from work or errands to your best friend every single day. You get to live every single day knowing you are with YOUR person. The list goes on.
Everyday, I am learning to see how amazing marriage is in a society that predominately sees marriage as more flawed than good. The imperfections of marriage are what makes it that much more amazing. It’s teamwork. I was always so scared that our next argument would be the official start of our dooms day marriage. In reality, it just brings us together to love each other harder than before.
I know we will go through hard times. I know we will say things we wish we didn’t. I know our marriage will go through unpleasant phases. We have only gotten our feet wet, and we have a long way to go. BUT I also know that we haven’t experienced all the good yet. I know we will make more amazing memories. The longer we are together the more traditions that will come about.
Don’t sugarcoat marriage, but don’t talk it down too much either. It’s a gift from above. Let’s treat it like that.
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