Diary of a Marriage: All Good Things Must Come to an End.

My tell-all about the behind-closed-doors stuff marriages are made of wraps up. What I’ve learned, what I’ll miss, and what I wish I’d never put down on paper.

Em & J. Snapped by CD.

Em & J. Snapped by CD.

Almost exactly three years ago I waltzed into the office of my colleague, Carrie, who also happens to be a dear friend. (And the editor of Philadelphia Wedding.) We worked together before I knew J., and she was there when I got the breathless phone call from my mother all those years ago: “Honey, I just met your future mother-in-law in the deli line at the grocery store. I gave her your email address—you remember her son, don’t you?” A few weeks later, Carrie heard all about our first date; a year or so later, she squealed appropriately when I came in one Monday morning wearing an engagement ring. {Ed. Note: Nothing about my endurance of your wedding planning??}

“I feel like people spend so much time planning the wedding,” I had told her, “that they forget there’s actually a life afterwards.” I pitched the blog—a sort of behind-the-scenes look at what really goes on in a marriage—and she agreed to it immediately. Diary of a Marriage was born, and now, over 200 posts later, it’s become a log of the first years of our life together.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few things. Writing about your marriage every week calls for heaps of reflection. It’s interesting how much different things look when you write them down. Like:

I had my freakouts. About many things. Including:

We had our bumps in the road, but they were mostly, thankfully, small.

But we climbed over the bumps, even the ones that felt like mountains, and we made it back to steady ground.

I suppose I should have some grand takeaway from three years of thinking, writing, and reflecting on my marriage, but it really all just comes down to this: Marriage is tough. But it’s also wonderful. Hilarious. Aggravating. Humbling. Comforting. Surprising. It’s a crazy ride, and a million words float around it and they all say the same thing: Keep going, keep going, even if one of you wants to get off—and one of you probably will, if only for a flashing moment—keep going.

Maybe someday our grandkids will find these posts, all printed out in a dusty stack somewhere and they’ll ask us about them—“Blogs? What were blogs?” they’ll say. And we’ll have the stories from our first almost-decade together, when we had Jenga displays of trash in our kitchen and holes in the ceiling and a fake Christmas tree that topped off at about fourteen inches.  I’m sure we’ll look back at it all—even the hole in the ceiling—and think: Yes. That was the best time. All of that. And we’ll be right: Because it is.

Oh, and Justin, I love you.

Hey, you can still keep up with me! I’ll be just over on Philly Mag’s new shopping and style blog, Shoppist. Catch up with me daily at phillymag.com/shoppist.

 

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