Marriage should be hard...

 A study showed that  couples who were unhappy but stuck through it, 

polled as happy or extremely happy 5 years later.

Before I even write this post, I see some of you rolling your eyes and thinking "She has no idea what's coming..." as you read it. But that's why I'm writing it.

Lately, I've felt guilty for loving marriage. For not thinking it's really hard. For not arguing more with my husband.

I've been afraid people think we're just naive. Still in the honeymoon stage. 

I don't think either is true. 

This is how some people portray marriage. I'm sad for those people.

First of all, I don't think we had a honeymoon stage as some seem to define it. It wasn't all kisses and lilies and romance and passion. And we never woke up wondering where that went and what we'd gotten ourselves into. 

And I don't think I'm completely naive. I know marriage takes work. It takes a lot of talking to God. Derrick and I do get annoyed with each other. We do disagree sometimes. But we don't let the little things become big things. We try our best not to nag. We try to appreciate and build each other up. We realize marriage is choosing to love and give and let go when you need to. 

Yes, sometimes we fail. And sometimes we don't love each other like we should.
But we try to be for each other always. The others biggest fan. 

 

Pretty much. Yeah. 

We are partners, best friends, and lovers.  For life.

With all of that comes differences and moments of disagreement.

With all of that comes working together, laughing together, doing life together every day.
Holding each others hand through the pain and the adventures.
And that's fun. And awesome. And comforting. 

After people that have been married longer than us say that marriage is hard...it makes me fear that 7 or 10 or 20 years down the road we won't feel the way we do now.

And I'm not happy about that. Stop stealing our joy. Stop putting those thoughts into our minds. We're not ignoring that life has its trials and tribulations. But we also don't want to dread what could happen 10 years from now.

I'll give you an example of how this has gotten into my head, and how amazing my husband is. 

Monday night we were in the car discussing this very topic. 

Renee: "I don't know. Maybe 10 years from now we won't feel the same way."

Derrick: "We will."

Renee: "Maybe when we have kids, then that will change everything."

Derrick: "NO. Then there will be even more awesomeness in the house."

So here's to achieving even more awesomeness.