Twenty Years and Counting

Yesterday my wife and I celebrated our 20 year wedding anniversary.  We had plans to go to lunch and to celebrate out together a bit.  It didn't happen.  Instead the schools were closed because of a snow storm and the roads were too icy for everyone to get around easily.  So we ate lunch at home with some candles.  We had dinner with our children.  It didn't go as planned and it was a blessing.

That is my first point of advice to anybody considering marriage.  Maybe you won't be as uptight as we were about everything going perfect on your wedding day...but if you are this one's for you.  At your wedding and beyond the things that don't go according to plan ARE your future memories.  That is what you will remember forever the things that went wrong.  The more wrong the bigger the memory.  So what can you do with that?  Well I suggest you relax and try to enjoy it, because as I say that will be the makeup of your memories.

We tortured our children by pulling out the video of our wedding and making them watch.  That right there was one of our wedding memories.  The video person hired to tape our wedding was instead in the reception hall taping at the beginning of the wedding.  So we do not have the first few moments (like 10-15 minutes).  Luckily the tape began at the point where my Wife's grandmother (a long time minister and pastor of a church before people even argued about whether that was appropriate or not) was speaking to us and giving us advice.  My wife's uncle, Rev. John Holland was the minister who married us but we wanted her grandmother to come up and say whatever was on her mind. 

One of the things that we noticed from the tape and the comments people left for us at the end of the tape were the advice people had about the BIG issues in our future and to keep open communication about everything.  They mentioned the issues that finances cause in a marriage. Good advice.

So afterward after the kids went to bed my wife and I were reflecting and she said, "what do you think is the biggest reason we have survived our marriage while many of our friends and families marriages ended already?"  I thought back on the few (ok many) troubles we have had through the last 20 years and what really caused them.  Yes many had to do with communication... communication about money, sex, relationship, etc..  The biggest problem I felt however was that at each point we had a problem either one of us began to feel like we were alone.  We had to solve this problem by ourselves. 

The strength of marriage is really the basis of marriage.  Instead of one, you now have two.  You don't have to come up with the solution to money, sex, diet, health, children, education or anything by yourself.  Only the fact that we luckily realized that at the difficult periods when we were being tricked into believing that we had to fix it ourselves and could actually seek help from each other did we make it through.  Awkward sentence right?  Ok to solve our challenges we had to pull together to make it through.  It by the way doesn't end.  We still are doing that daily.  We still are tempted to believe we are in it alone.  We still have to overcome that loneliness and realize we can rely on each other.  That is what makes the bond stronger.  Beyond that and here is the kicker, it isn't just the two of us.  We are part of a family.  Our kids help, absolutely they do in many ways.  Our parents still help, I guess the job of parent is forever.  Our grandparents helped.  We have even had to count on our friends to solve a challenge. 

So that is my big advice to the newlyweds, don't attempt to do it alone.  Use the relationship and that means everything no matter how personal or intemit it seems that the issue is.  Odd that one could believe that they couldn't share everything with their spouse.  Example: could your wife actually help if you are considering an extra-marital affair?  You would probably want to keep that one to yourself wouldn't you?  Don't keep it to yourself, be honest and try to explore why you would even think that way in the first place.  That is just an example of a problem you may want to hide there are others.  A gambling passion, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, sexual fetish (for sure share that you never know she may comply). 

Anything can be shared and that is the beauty of the bond.  It's not a guarantee that everything will work out in fact once you share the other spouse could take that upon themselves and think they have to solve it all by their lonesome and the problem starts again.

There you go have fun and keep it going.  I'll check back on this issue again.  Maybe I'll learn something in the next 20 years I hadn't considered here.

 

Technorati tags: Marriage, 20 Year Anniversary, Love