Diary of a Marriage: Working Girl

Before I got married, my mom (happily married to my dad for 34 years) gave me a bit of advice. More of a warning, really: “It’s work. Marriage is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s work.” I half believed her, half shrugged it off. Now, nearly two and a half years in, I get it. Marriage — if you do it right — is work. It’s hard, but rewarding — and the benefits far outweigh any 401K or dental plan I’ve ever been offered.

J. and I didn’t live together before we got hitched, so married life was a huge adjustment for us. The first few months were a crash course in one another’s little quirks — all the things you don’t really appreciate when your relationship consists of dinner dates and the occasional sleepover (i.e. he snores when he’s really, really tired; I am very, very particular about organization). Learning about these idiosyncrasies was fun. Adjusting to them, dealing with the responsibility of being someone else’s someone, was work.

In the beginning of our marriage, I’d often forget to let J. know where I was, that I was coming home late, that I wouldn’t need dinner. He’d call me, sounding angry, wondering where I was and when I was coming home. At first I resented him for it, grumbling that he was treating me like a child with a curfew. It wasn’t until I stopped long enough to listen to his last question — “Are you safe?” — that I realized he wasn’t angry; he was worried. (He’s now the happy recipient of approximately four hundred “I’ll be home soon/I’m running late/I’m on my way!” phone calls and texts each week.)

But it goes deeper than those everyday courtesies that soon become rote once you realize that you’re responsible for another human being and that someone else is looking out for you. It’s the work to constantly carve out time to be together, to connect, to actually talk and listen to one another.

I think about the time before I lived with J.: I’d come home after a long day and zone out on the couch with a sleeve of saltines and a jar of peanut butter. Sometimes that seems so much easier than sitting down at a dinner table and rehashing my day. I want to give one-word answers; I want to go to sleep. But it’s not until I’m knee-deep in the million minute details of my day — J. laughing and frowning and nodding at all the right spots — that I realize that this is the whole point of it all.

So often, those that we’re closest to get the worst of us. They get the cranky, exhausted, stressed, utterly spent version of you that’s left over at the end of the day. The work is always trying to give them the best of you. Even if you can’t always do it (hey, no one’s perfect), to at least try, and to never stop trying.

How do you and your fiance or husband make sure to carve out time for each other? Got any little tricks or advice? Let’s hear ’em!

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