marriage is not hard…

But it is work.

I had a whole conversation about this last week with a friend, and I was inspired to write down my thoughts and share them with the thousands of you who might read this and possibly resonate (and it’s fine if you don’t agree). Every so often, I hear people talk about marriage being hard.

I don’t think marriage is hard. I actually find marriage to be quite easy. Parenting? That can be hard. Life? That has hard moments. Figuring out what to feed six people every single night of your life forever until you die? Fucking HARD.

But marriage…it’s not hard. It’s a lot of work on occasion, but it’s certainly not hard. When other aspects of life get hard, marriage is the one thing that keeps me sane. Let me reiterate, however, that marriage does require work. It’s not 50/50 all the time, every moment of every day. It is not always roses and romance and date nights and quiet moments of love. It is intentional. It requires grace, effort, and patience.

But it’s not hard.

And it’s definitely not 50/50.

Sometimes, marriage is 90/10 or 30/70. Sometimes it’s 90 percent me ready to ship the children off to an orphanage to live out the remainder of their childhood because it’s their summer vacation and I am so overstimulated by the noise, and my husband 10 percent not against that but also gently reminding me that I do love this kids more than life itself and I’d miss them if I shipped them off to boarding school.

Sometimes our marriage is 30 percent me lying on the couch reading a book and saying let them eat cake because I ate a late lunch and can’t even consider the idea of thinking about dinner while my husband 70 percent cooks, cleans, and asks me if I want a snack. Some days are survival mode for one, while the other quietly takes over all the things so that nothing falls apart. And then something happens, and you trade places. Or balance out. Or whatever.

That’s what marriage looks like, and we’ve had more than 21 years of marriage to use as an example. I can assure you that not every single one of those 21 years was a great year. Though we have been so incredibly fortunate to have chosen so well in one another, we’ve had seasons that stretched us.

For example, the single most difficult year of our marriage was the year we wanted to make Addison a big sister and suffered back-to-back miscarriages. That was not a good year for us. We struggled. Did we keep trying to have a second baby or did we give up? I could only think about my own heartbreak and my daughter, and my husband could only think about my health. It was a sad year.

The year our son was 5 and suffered an unprovoked grand mal seizure. I wasn’t myself for a solid year. I know I was difficult to live with. I didn’t sleep because the anxiety and fear were so overwhelming. I didn’t function properly if I didn’t see or hear our son for more than a minute or two at a time. I didn’t want to travel without the kids. I refused to get on a plane without them for fear of being out of reach for even an hour or two. I was a hot fucking mess, and my husband picked up every single piece of what I dropped that year.

The years the twins were 1-3. Those sucked. Two babies without communication skills running in opposite directions while our two older girls also needed our attention? We stopped accepting invitations to leave our home, stopped going to events, and essentially kept to ourselves for two years because we were overwhelmed.

Those were all such hard years for us, and we struggled. But even through grief and loss and the absolute worst moments in our marriage, it wasn’t hard. It just required a bit more work. Sometimes on my behalf, sometimes on my husband’s.

Maybe I’m spoiled.

I certainly hear it all the time. Lighthearted jokes from others about how my husband does everything for me. He does. He does everything for me, literally. But it’s not because I ever asked or encouraged him to. He’s just always been this way. His love language is acts of service. Doing for others is how he shows his love. It’s why he had to teach me to use the coffee pot after 25 years together when he went out of town – because he’s always made and brought me my coffee.

Before my husband began working from home a decade ago, I was essentially a single mom with four kids all day long. He’d leave for his office at 6:30 every morning, and he’d be home by 6:30 every evening. He walked through the door just in time for family dinner, baths, and bedtime. He missed so much, and I carried so much. On the weekends and evenings when he was home, he took over parenting. Changed the diapers, gave baths, packed diaper bags, and chased kids around, made their plates, played with them, fed them, carried them, did whatever needed doing the moment it needed doing.

I remember old friends of ours gave me HELL for that. “Craig is a better mom that you,” and “That’s your job, not his,” but what they didn’t understand was 1 – Craig wasn’t doing those things because I asked him to, he was doing them because he knew I was doing it all five days a week, 12 hours a day without a single person to help, and he wanted to do those things because he was missing out but also to give me a break because he loves me, and 2 – he’s just a much better husband than most.

So, yes, maybe I’m spoiled. But it’s not because of my expectations or my demands. It’s because my husband ‘raised’ me this way since I was 18. I simply married a good man who has never treated showing up for our family or me as optional. He is not the kind of man who ‘helps’ with the kids because they’re his kids, too, and he doesn’t consider it helping…just parenting. He’s always done any and everything he can to make my life easier, and that’s his love language.

Just like mine is words of affirmation, and I affirm how proud I am of him when he finds things in our home without asking me where to find them. I’m kidding, I’m kidding…like 75% kidding!

Marriage is work.

I live with a man who makes me coffee, pours my coffee, brings me my coffee, and refills my coffee every single morning of my life for 25 years. Who will drop what he is doing to come kill a bug for me on the pool deck, or who will see me on the security cameras trying to figure out how the air machine works and will come outside and fill up a new pool float for me? He will spend 3 hours digging my garden and doing all the dirty parts of every single thing associated with my garden, bathe the dog, wash my car, put the dishes away, and do three loads of laundry while I’m deciding which plants I’m putting in which planters, and I’ll spend the same three hours wondering if he still thinks I’m pretty because he didn’t mention it to me during those three hours.

I’ll send him a four-hour text message novel telling him I love him, and he’ll make sure my gas tank is full and my car is clean. Or send me flowers. Or mop the floors. Or wash the bedding. Or pick up something he heard me talking about possibly wanting.

We’re basically starring in two different romantic comedies around here, but it works for us. We’ve learned to translate one another’s love languages. While he tells me he loves me every day, multiple times, he shows it by doing things for me. Do we argue? Sure, all the time. The man cannot find a single item in our home if it has had the audacity to move two inches from the spot he placed it when he last used it, and I have the  patience of a…well, I don’t have patience so there’s that.

We hurt each other’s feelings all the time without intending to, and we apologize. We’ve had seasons in which our marriage has felt like pure bliss and happiness every single day, and we’ve had seasons in which our marriage has felt heavy (losing babies will do that to you).

But we’ve also made a decision that marriage deserves the work that it requires. And that keeps it from being hard. That doesn’t keep it from requiring work – because if you’re not working for yourself and for your spouse, your marriage won’t work. I think what works for us is knowing neither of us will ever be perfect, but we do have high expectations of one another. The secret? Well, I don’t think it’s about finding someone who never disappoints you. It’s finding someone who is willing and happy to choose you every time, even when that time is difficult.

Marriage is not hard.

(I’m stating this with the caveat that I do think those who are married to the wrong person, or to an abuser, or an addict, or a narcissist, or any of those types of people very much feel that marriage is hard, and rightfully so.) But I am also writing this for all the people who are married to the right person but who might be struggling or going through a tough time.

I’m certainly not a marriage therapist or a doctor or an expert, but I have been married for more than 21 years, and my husband and I celebrate 25 years together in a few months, and that does give me a bit of knowledge to draw from.

Marriage is not hard. But sometimes you’re going to have to work a little harder at your marriage. Sometimes, one of you is not going to be able to meet you halfway or give 100 percent. Sometimes, you’ll pick up the slack. Sometimes, your spouse will pick up the slack. Sometimes, your husband won’t be able to find the vacuum in the laundry room where it’s been for more than 12 years because someone accidentally put it on the right side of the laundry room refrigerator rather than the left side of the laundry room refrigerator where it normally goes and he’ll search high and low, upstairs and down, through every closet, bedroom, bathroom, porch, nook and cranny before he finally approaches you to tell you he’s certain the actual whole entire vacuum is missing and he has looked everywhere for it and you will find it in point 2 seconds a mere four feet from where it usually sits and you will think to yourself, “What in the actual fuck,” and find you will wonder how on earth you possibly married a man who is clearly blind.

And sometimes, your spouse will be explaining to you – a woman who turns 43 years old in less than two months – slowly like you have a disability, how to use a coffee pot, and he will very likely be wondering how in the actual fuck he’s married to a grown woman who cannot do anything for herself (his fault, obviously), and perhaps in that moment you’ll think marriage is hard (because the vacuum was right fucking there), but it’s important to remember that it really isn’t hard. It’s just work.

And you have to have two people willing to work and zero people willing to make it hard.

Marriage, when you choose well, will be the soft place you land when things are hard.