My husband and I met in a bar. I know, not very romantic, but that's how it happened. We actually met through a friend of mine that I cooked with in the restaurant of this old time style bar and grill. He was my friends brother in-law just moved here from the Bay Area of California. This was part of the reason were all friends to begin with, the mutual love and longing for the golden state. Him and I dated for about 4 years before getting married. This last September was our 5 year wedding anniversary. No applause please. Yes, it was a triumph, but any one can do it and I'm going to tell you how.
I know 5 years of marriage doesn't seem like a lot or maybe it does. Either way, it's work day in and day out. I was not always aware of this though. I thought that if you find the right person it should never seem like work to make the two of you happy. Right? HA!! I've been with this guy for 10 years now and even though he is the right one for me, he is still his own person and no one is JUST alike. As a matter of fact, him and I are very opposite in a lot of ways. For one; I live rock and roll. My wardrobe consists of Levi's jeans, In N Out t-shirts and many pairs of off the wall Vans. I am a tree hugging, camping, animal loving hippie. He, on the other hand is very into hip hop and rap, he's very G.Q. in his style and is always sure that his shoe laces do not show out of the bottom of his pant cuffs. He is very much a city slicker in most aspects of the term. We have some similarities and a lot of them are in our views and beliefs. Those are very important in a marriage and especially if you plan to have children. We my not always see eye to eye on these views and beliefs, but we understand these things come from the heart and how you were raised and we respect these in each other. Even the opposites are attractive to one another. He is (shall I say it?) 6 years younger than I. He keeps me young, to say the least. I enjoy going to hip hop clubs with him and going dancing. He LOVES to camp now and especially with the kids (I say plural because our newest member, The Dog, is of course as much of a kid as The Kid).
Like I said earlier though, no one is just alike. Even twins, identical twins can prove that. They have different likes and habits. So any time a person is stuck with another person till death do you part, there is going to be work involved to coexist happily for eternity. We found that out BIG time after The Kid was born. About a year or less into parenthood we just about imploded.
Most of our family live else where in the country. The Kids immediate family that lives near us consists of her Nanna which is my husbands mother. She's retired, does not drive and lives waaay on the other side of town. Not to mention the few close friends we did have did not live relatively close either nor did they have babies. Most of them had grade school kids. We had NO idea what we were doing and [in my eyes] were alone at raising this miniature human being. I mean she was a live, breathing human that was solely in our care and depending on us 100%. Talk about crazy reality!
Needless to say it put some big strains on mine and my husband relationship. Even after almost 7 years of being together, we had to learn how to live together all over again. It was no longer him and I out to conquer the world. It was now The Kid out to conquer us. Shortly after having my breakdown and realizing I could not be responsible for giving The Kid a part time daddy, among other epiphanies, my research mode kicked in.
We are definitely not the type of family who could afford a shrink (although probably highly needed for each one of our family members) and ultimately that is what we needed. At least that was my reasoning, especially after reading countless books and searching and reading for countless hours on the Internet. I knew the basics of our problems but I was not finding the solution tailored for our problems. I finally called in a friend card. A friend from high school whom I had found on the oh-so-wonderful Internet years after moving on with our lives happened to be a family counselor. I explained to her that I was not looking for any hand outs [I was] and that I truly just needed some professional insight on what we could do in our financial situation [we're poor]. I briefly told her our base issues and also explained that religion is a bit different for us in our daily lives so the suggestion of talking to our spiritual leader was not an option. After some encouraging words and props on not throwing in the towel like so many do she gave me a few tips and recommended the book The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work. This thing has become my bible.It's got sticky note tabs sticking out here and there, dog eared pages, scuffed corners, highlighter marker every where. It's an amazing tool. This book finally gave me the a way to work on our relationship instead of over defining the types of problems we may have and trying to get us to talk and think like the other to fix it. This gave me ways to rekindle our fire and to help bring us back to the feelings that brought us together in the first place. One of the coolest tools of the book is a 7 week exercise that is simply leaving your loved one a note [or that's how I tweaked it to work for us]. It's used for the work week when you don't see each other very much. The days objectives are all different and vary, like writing about a time you were happiest with each other, or what are 3 things you love and would not change about your partner? Or something of the sorts. You would not believe how teen-aged-boy-horny we were for each other. Of course it was that among other things we were working on suggested by the book that made us realize the love we ultimately have for each other. In other words it made us realize that no matter what life throws at us (and it seems to throw a lot our way. I don't know whether to be pissed or flattered.) we could live through it together. We've survived nearly 4 years of parenthood and I still love The Kids daddy more than I consciously realize.
We have our bumps where we'll fall off the wagon of marital sobriety and have to remember where we are and why we are here. Then we just get right back on the crazy wagon and continue on our venture of monkey taming.
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