A reminder to focus on my love.
You know sometimes I’m amazed Justin and I not only made it this far, and are still so in love with each other. We had both come from divorced parents and I especially didn’t have very many healthy relationship models. Neither one of us really knew what love was or what marriage took to succeed. But we did know we didn’t want to put our child(ren) through the pain we experienced as children.
A few of our single friends have asked us in the past how we did it: how we found “the right one”, how we made things work and how in the world we stayed so passionate for each other. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few weeks, trying to understand our own romantic journey and discovery, or self-discovery really, trying to find our own “keys to marital success”.
The journey is different for everyone, I’m sure, but here are the things that made the difference for us:
- Letting go of our type: I was The Bagel Girl and Justin was a construction runner at the time; we both had daily stops at a tool warehouse in town. He spotted me and worked on intuition. My first impression of Justin was “not my type” (based on my type until that point, I can now see that was a good sign), and although he didn’t say so, I wasn’t exactly his either. Justin was accustomed to thoughtless, high school girls; I was accustomed to assholes. So when I started talking philosophy and theology on our first date, he knew I wasn’t the standard cookie-cutter girl. Likewise when I watched him turn his truck’s system down (yeah, he was one of those guys with extremely large and loud speaker systems in his truck) upon entering a residential area, I was literally shocked. Neither of us would have been able to get to that point of noticing these new and interesting qualities had we not stepped outside what we thought we knew about “the perfect date”.
- Letting go of the fairy tale: A very well-meaning woman had once told me, as I was sobbing over a broken heart, that “if it was meant to be it wouldn’t be so hard”. I loved her to death but something about those words didn’t sit right with me. For all of our lives, we’re read fairy tales and “happily ever after” stories. But love doesn’t always come in and sweep us off our feet, carrying us away to Perfect Marriage Land – especially when you’re entering into the relationship with so much baggage. Justin and I went into our relationship knowing that we were in love and that we would have a lot of work to do to figure out how exactly we should put that into action. The first two years of our relationship and several periods throughout were fucking hard. There were moments no one thought we would (or should) make it through. But because we accepted in advance that it wouldn’t always come easily, we didn’t let the worst of times tear us apart. We kept pushing through it, focusing on what we wanted with each other and building our partnership skills along the way. I can’t imagine where we’d be if we had given up.
- Remembering it’s not 50/50. This one came from my Grandma (who has been happily married since 1954) and is probably the greatest key to our success. I had asked her several months before our wedding what her best advice would be and she was quite adamant that a good relationship is never 50/50. It’s closer to 80/20…you just have to be willing to give more than you take. This one challenged me at the time, but she insisted that marriage needs to move from a place of generosity. She explained what I now know to be true in regards to marriage or parenting: unconditional love and endless generosity do not create selfish people who walk over you; it creates an environment of kindness and compassion. It fills people up until they have no choice but to pour it back into those around them.
- Never letting myself go. This one also came from my grandma as well and seriously rubbed up against my feminist mind. After all, shouldn’t Justin love me regardless of whether I wear makeup or gain weight? The answer is yes. But letting yourself go has more to do with Who You Are than what you look like. Justin fell in love with me because I was determined, strong-willed and cared deeply about myself; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If I “let myself go” – stopped learning and fighting for what I believe in, sat on the couch eating junk food in my pajamas watching trash TV, stopped being the best person I could be…if I let go of my role in our partnership and did a 180 on my personality, he was obviously going to feel differently. He fell in love with me for Who I Am, for my best qualities and for my desire to impress him with those qualities as I did when we first dated. And he’ll miss that person if she leaves just because “we’re married now.”
- Filling each other’s voids. I used to feel resentful anytime I felt I was “mothering” Justin. Likewise I felt uncomfortable admitting that I needed him to care for me the same way. But recently we’ve come to see the amazing healing power and stronger connection that can be had when we symbolically “parent” each other. I believe we marry the person who can love us the way we’ve never been loved and our gift of understanding, kindness and generosity has the power to fill voids we’ve been aching to fill. Together we can right the wrongs of one another’s pasts, giving each other what we may not have had enough of and sheltering one another just as a loving parent unconditionally and automatically shelters their child.
There are a myriad of other things I feel contributed to our success: being open and honest but knowing when honesty would be more hurtful than helpful, understanding our first role is as Zeb’s parents but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to neglect our needs as lovers, being silly together and that sometimes we need reminders of it all.
I’m glad to have written these things out; I love when messages like these come through me, as well as to me. The past few weeks have given us new challenges as we navigate this life and our unjobbing experiences and it’s good to be reminded of these principles of mindfully choosing unconditional love, generosity and compassion.
I'm Tara Wagner, life coach and creator of the Digging Deep process, where I coach women out of survival mode to recreate their lives and families.
Wonderful. I particularly like the advice from your grandma: “It’s closer to 80/20…you just have to be willing to give more than you take. This one challenged me at the time, but she insisted that marriage needs to move from a place of generosity.” My husband has taught me that one, very well.
Congrats on 10 ten years together! Caleb and I will also have our 10 year in December and like you we have had many moments that either we or others never thought we would make it through. For us trust, being open, and honesty are our major keys to success. Having gone through some difficult times over the last few year. (not in our relationship but with my family) I have learned that it’s also about being there and supporting each other. Understanding when to step in and be the rock in the relationship when the other one can barely stand on their own two feet. Years ago you told me about the 80/20 thing that your grandma said and I have really tried to bring that to our relationship. It really does work. If you aren’t so worried about everything being equal it all seems to fall into place. It makes sense that everything cant be equal. There are just some time where you just have nothing to give. Most of all though I think being friends is what’s most important. Being lovers is amazing. Being parents together is so much better then I ever thought it would be. I can’t imagine sharing my life with anyone else. But, he is my best friend. Even though we have had tough times he has always been the one I cant wait to talk to when something goes good. Or when something goes bad. He is always my favorite person to hang out with. He knows things about be I wouldn’t dare tell anyone else and he never judges me. He accepts me for me. Just as I do him.
I am very happy for you guys and wish you many more years together. You have found in your relationship what many people spend a life time looking for. Cherish each other every day and continue to do what you do because it’s working.
Love you and miss you,
Paris
Thank you (as always
) for sharing so genuinely and thoroughly. You’ve given me much food for thought. Blessings on the next part of your journey. Your “Wisconsin” presence will be missed.
I love your take on letting yourself go.
This is such a great post and I have to say it came at the right time. I’ve been struggling emotionally because of different things in my life right now, finances included and I’ve been really on the edge of mental turmoil. One of the problems I have been having has been with my husband (2 years married, 4 years together) and our connection. It seems to have been damaged, parts lost.
Then I read this. I connected immediately with both the 50/50 and the ‘Letting Myself Go’ sections. I used to give and give and give and he, like you state, was so filled with my love that it came back to me. I didn’t notice that when things got hard and we became frustrated with life and sometimes each other that I had stopped giving so much and started demanding more.
As far as letting myself go I’ve been really burned by the last couple of years with the jobs we no longer have and my own business taking hits, people that we thought we could trust betraying us and having to take so much help from my parents that it feels like we’re looking for handouts when we’re not. Because of all of this I have continually given up on my dreams, written them off or just pushed them aside. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to get them back but I am just so scared to put myself out there.
I need to fix both of these, not just for my husband’s sake but for my own. I know I am only human and I oddly don’t feel a tremendous amount of guilt at the revelation. I just feel relief that I know two areas that I can start to repair to begin to make my life back into what it should be.
Thanks for posting this.
Absolutely beautiful and wise. Yours are definitely words to love by (sorry I couldn’t resist!). Oh Happy Happy Anniversary! You two and your committment to each other and Zeb are incredible! Peace, Angela
This is beautiful and helpful. Thank you.
What I’ve learned about real love in the last 6 years is this: Pride must go out of the window – you have got to have the strength to say you are sorry when you say or do something out of frustration / exhaustion / hunger / etc. to the other person. And secondly, you have to keep your manners about you – saying thank you not only at the time the person does something nice for you but also later if it was REALLY nice, mention it again how much it meant to you. And, lastly, tell them you love them every single day, sometimes several times a day if the mood strikes you, tell them how much they mean to you late at night before bed as often as you can remember to because you never know when, for either one of you, it will be your last day on earth together.
Inside I think of this marriage as my “real marriage.” I was married before my current union and I (regretfully so, unfortunately) refer to the first as my “practice marriage.” We married young. I sucked at everything a husband should be. I was selfish. I was self-absorbed. I was thoughtless. I was unwavering. I am not saying she was a princess but two wrongs never make a right and the “practice marriage” is proof in the pudding.
Since marrying this second time I have learned a number of lessons. Perhaps the most important though is that on most days I should talk less and listen more. I have never been a great listener and my wife isn’t a huge talker. But when she does open up, out of my love and respect for her, I listen. I watch her talk to me. I hear each word as if is gold in the fingertips of Midas. I absorb each syllable. And while she often looks at me for no resolve or answer or even agreement, she often says, “Thanks babe. Thank you for listening to me.”
So what I have I learned? I have learned that even if I don’t say it out loud all the time, it is me who should be saying, “Thanks babe. Thanks for opening up.”
Wow! Things I have been thinking but not sure how to put in words. It so resinates with me. It is like reading my life, my relationship.
Nice!
What a beautiful post!!! And all true. For me and my husband it took growing up. He had been through 2 divorces, making bad choices when he was young. I had never been married, but only because the guy I was with wouldn’t marry me. I guess we had to go through this to figure it all out?
We met when I was 35 and he was 39. We were friends for a long time. We talked about things we wouldn’t tolerate in a relationship and things we had to have. We had no intentions of dating each other…until the day he kissed me. Now we have been together for 10 years, married for 8. Yup, just like you.
We have been through years of hard times, but we never fought about money or the lack of it. We worked together as a team. I’ve always said that it isn’t 50/50, it’s 100/100 because we both have to give it our all for this to work. It has worked beautifully. I am amazed everyday at how good our marriage, our relationship, our friendship is.
Okay…sorry for hijacking your post.
Congratulations on hitting the decade mark! Ronnie and I hit 20 years married (about 24 together) a couple of days ago. My personal distillation is that staying married is about wanting to stay married and being willing to work at it. It’s not a fairytale and it’s sometimes terribly hard work. But it’s worth it because the good that results is *really* good. The good stuff is better than a fairytale.
Thanks for this,it’s great!Thought provoking,touching,educating &sharing! I will share it with others,and I love the way you put things here.You’ve put things we all know into the bite size pieces we all need and can grasp.Your words are wonderful and you’ve obviously hit a nerve with folks.Thanks again I’ll be sharing it with my man,and I needed a few of these reminders!
Good article.
The 50/50 thing is so freaking hard for me and my husband. Did you ever see The Joy Luck Club where the guy has a list dividing everything into 50/50 on the refrigerator? I try not to be that guy!!
“…unconditional love and endless generosity do not create selfish people who walk over you; it creates an environment of kindness and compassion. It fills people up until they have no choice but to pour it back into those around them.” had to repost this as my facebook status. if only we could all grasp this…
perfect. we are in such a place of renegotiating our relationship right now. great food for thought. (more to say, but naking)
Definitely some awesome advice in there.. thanks for posting! My husband and I have been married for 12 years – it has not been easy but we’ve made it and I think we’ve got a better, stronger, and healthier relationship then we did when we met.
As for advice? Give each other space!!! Respect your partner’s boundaries! My husband and I have our separate spaces where we work and keep our stuff. It works with our need for solitude time & different working conditions and also makes for easier and stress-free cleaning of the rest of the house. It allows us to “keep ourselves up” with our own interests without being in anyone’s way.
just came across your blog and this post. what a pleasure to read. so good. very true and wise words. thanks!
fabulous.
the 80/20 didn’t work for us at the beginning. it works i think if certain issues are resovled in both of you. i gave and gave and got little back.
what i have learnt is that communication is everything. that you fight to talk if you have to, but you talk. you express yourself truthfully, and you talk things through. both are vital.
I have been reading your blog for a while now and that post was the most beautiful and, possilbly, one of the most profound yet. Thank you for sharing such amazing insights.
As for me, what have I learned about love? I am timid to share my hasty thoughts after you and the others but one thing is that it is so important (for me, anyway) is not to expect the other to fulfill all our needs, to make us happy and complete, etc. That is so not their job. They surely didn’t sign up for it and quite honestly they (however wonderful they are) don’t really have the capacity to do that , its just not in any of the job discriptions of lover, husband, wife, partner, whatever and so we shouldn’t fault them for our being unfulfilled, uninspired, or generally unhappy. That is our responsibility. That takes a whole lot of pressure and expectation off of the other person and they can just be and we can simply love them for that.
blessings!
Wow, that’s just so beautifully put and honest and it’s given me a few things to really think about. Especially the 80/20 thing, I feel a great resistance to that.
I loved reading this post. There is a lot of truth in it and many things that have been on my mind too, for quite a while. Especially the not-letting-yourself-go part, which makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Thank you for posting this. There is some very good advice in this post, and I am going to be adding it to my facebook page. It’s nice to see someone post some practical and applicable advice about relationships, and not only romantic ones, but relationships in general.
This part really rings true for me. “She was quite adamant that a good relationship is never 50/50. It’s closer to 80/20…you just have to be willing to give more than you take.” You have a wise grandma!
Thank you for this post, especially the words about generosity. As for what I’ve learned about love, over the past few months I’ve begun to see that I need to be willing to be vulnerable … more vulnerable than I really want to be. He probably already can see whatever I’m trying to hide, anyway (anger, sadness, shame, etc.)….
Thank you for sharing your story! Having been married and then divorced I try to be very conscious of my viewpoint and values regarding what is best for me in my new relationship. I trip and stumble sometimes on what society, around me tells me makes a “healthy” relationship. I love your honest approach on this subject. You hit on target how I so often feel about my viewpoints towards love and relationships, but just had never put into words for myself.
hi there I absolutely loved reading this – Im in a sticky point in my marriage at the moment and am feeling un appreciated by husband and children and ground down and since the birth of my 3rd dd 2 yrs ago ( a huge very welcome surprise) I feel I have lost my identity as a human being in my own right.
reading this has made me reassess my feelings toward my husband and I love love love your grandmas advice 80/20 – and the unconditional love has gone on my fb ststus and will be going on my wall as a reminder when im feeling bogged down with it all
thankyou xxx
Great post, Tara. I especially like the part about the myth of true love not being hard. My husband and I have been married 10 years this fall and we have fought for those ten years. We’re just passionate people – about life, our opinions and each other. Yet, he’s the shade of my heart and the one I dream of at night. You and Justin seem like you’re that to each other too.
Keep being the strong, smart, fun woman you are!