No Way Out

It's our two-month anniversary today, or, as Mark says, "Day 61 of the hostage situation."

People have asked me how married life is, and, really?

Honestly?

It's great.

I mean, come on.  I've got a mostly-willing hostage!  What could be wrong with that?

But, in all honesty, I love being married to my best friend.  I love it even on the days where everything feels off, or we have fights, or I cry, or everything goes wrong.  Married life is still, overall, really really great.  But our relationship and our life together was already great before we were married, so that helps.

Little known, shocking fact: marriage doesn't fix a relationship.  I should know.  It didn't fix my first relationship.

And, another shocking fact?  Marriage is work.  Really fucking hard work.  It's not all breakfasts in bed and making out in the kitchen and dinner on the table when you get home from work.

And it's even not the same as dating, even if you were already mostly living together.

Marriage requires daily maintenance.  It requires talking (which I'm not always very good at), and trust, and more vulnerability than you knew was possible.  It means someone is almost always there, for the bad days when you hate the world and everything in it, along with the good days.  You have to consider them, and you want to consider them (even when they tell you not to).

Marriage means you're going to get your feelings hurt, and you're going to find out that you unknowingly hurt theirs.

It means there is someone to willingly do the dishes for you, and someone you willingly rotate laundry for.

For me, it means waking up to coffee.  It means a partner-in-crime.  It means playing just one more game of Minion Trouble (or Chutes and Ladders, or Sorry) with Kaylee so that he can have a few minutes of down time.  It means he gives Kaylee a bath so that I can have a few minutes of down time.  It means someone who knows me better than anyone else possibly could.

It means planning a last-minute birthday party for Kaylee, joint-cleaning the whole house, and cooking dinner for 9 people.

It means eating Fazoli's and Imos on a fairly regular basis, even though I hate both.

It means we go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, because I have an endless love for Johnny Depp.

So.

Two months into our marriage. (Plus fourteen years total of knowing each other.)  At this point of my first marriage, I'm pretty sure I already knew it was not going to be a good one.  He'd already "stopped trying" (key words for failure if there ever were any).  We were both depressed.  I couldn't see a way out, even though I desperately wanted to find one.

I don't want a way out this time.  I want a way to make it last forever.

And I'm doing my best to make sure that it does.