“My marriage rocks, not on the rocks.” I think this line is lit (naks, trying hard Gen Z).
I will humble brag by saying our married life is not perfect -- it's cool. We have fights. Some are overly dramatic that deserve “walling,” some are solved by my husband’s cooking.
We’ve been married for more than two years now. We spend time together every single day. Day in, day out -- no one else in the house but us. We frequently chat with each other even when in transit or at the office (oops!). You see, we have so much time in our hands to fight! 🤣 But we don't. Only when my topak and insecurities pay a visit. We managed to shorten crayola nights and defrost cold shoulders.
I think it's easy to picture me as a dragon always lashing out on my husband when we were bf-gf, well, because, that was true! LOL! But just how did I evolve into a sweet (ehem) nice (ehem) lady today?
Conscious change
I stopped needing to win arguments. Back then, I always wanted to have the last word, no matter how silly and immature those words could be. At least I got the last rebuttal. I was like this even with my parents and siblings. My short stay so far at an online community for newlyweds taught me “it is better to be married than to be right, more important to be kind than to be right.” Minor things that I can forego, I will forego. A very lame example: My husband has different ways of cleaning/storing his stuff and that I need to learn to accept. If I want to practice KonMari, then I’ll summon her high cheerful spirits on my own.
Instead of hammering my husband’s head to remember my nit-pickings, I’ll remind myself that he’s his own person and his difference to my preferences does not make him wrong.
Humor
Since getting married to this man, I developed involuntary snorts when laughing. I never had this growing up. I didn’t even know that existed nor how it’s done. I just turned up one day doing it so embarrassingly. Maybe because my husband’s jokes have leveled up, they now deserve long, hard snorting laughs 😂😇 Wet eyes and achy belly from laughing are no longer enough to fully enjoy his wit. Looking stupid is so much fun when done together. 😂
Flirtation
Not going to be TMI with this one because I genuinely believe we all know how to flirt and we’ve all done it before. But I think this is a challenge in many marriages that fail. Partners become complacent. Intimacy has become a chore. In the online community that I mentioned earlier, ladies with long, successful marriages advised us newbies to be our husbands’ mistresses.
How do mistresses capture married men? They listen to their rants, they let them relax at the end of a tiring day, they compliment, put them in a pedestal, they take care of their physical appearance, they make “life” exciting.
I guess by now you already get what I mean. 😇
Keeping roles in check
My husband usually comments that I am like his mom in many ways. I used to see that as a good thing because his mom is amazing, and people say that men tend to marry women who are more like their mothers. But also thanks to the online community, I slowly realized it is not always a nice thing to hear.
Sure, it is great that I get to be fraction of my wonderful mom-in-law, but I I have a different role to play in my husband’s life. I need to treat my husband as an equal adult, not my child. While he can be sometimes childish (and so do I, actually more frequently), I am not one to stand around parenting him. I cannot tell him how to behave or decide. What I need to do instead is to support and trust him. His parents already did the best job in raising him to be the respectful and hard-working man he is now. My job is to be this man’s wife.
Communication
This is cliche. This is written in all marriage counselling books. Everyone gives this advice. So many gurus swear by this. Simply because it is the truth.
I used to be this pabebe piece of sh.t (LOL HARSH) who feels entitled that my partner should be able to guess what I think deep inside. I want to go on a date? My husband should know this with only a few hints from my facial expression. I want him to hug me? He should automatically know it when I turn my back on him in bed. I thought all wives deserve a mind-reader partner and I end up getting disappointed because spoiler alert, I didn't marry one! Mind-readers do not exist! And if they do, they certainly aren't our spouses! We need to spell it out with our husbands. We need to be able to communicate what we want and how we want it.
They will only be able to satisfy our needs if they know what they are in the first place.
We still don’t have life’s answers. No one will. Maybe the Pope and Mahatma Gandhi do. Just like any other couples, we still make the wrong decisions on where to go, what to buy, what to eat, how to fix things in the house, etc. We have so much to experience together. We don’t have anything else figured out apart from knowing we want to be together forever (corny, I know).
I still have my episodes (a.k.a. insecurities) and I am a work in progress. With sheer dumb luck, God paired me with the most understanding person in the planet. It's a pity my husband suffers the side effects of my insecurities. One thing he's never changed is his forgiving nature. And for that I am eternally grateful.
I hope five to 10 years from now this blog still exists and I can update how we have further evolved as a couple trying to make it through life. I would love to read this entry by then too, for sure.
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