Today, we celebrate our 8th year of marriage and I think we've both been pretty introspective over the last few days leading up to it. I read something several years ago that really built up the level of anticipation for our 8th anniversary - pretty sure it was somewhere on MSN or something so you KNOW it was both true and worthwhile... Anyways, the gyst of if was that if you survive your 7th year of marriage (otherwise known as the 7 Year Itch), your likelihood of staying married improves drastically.
Well, we've done it. We made it through year 8, so our chances are pretty good from here on out.
Our marriage looks a lot different, I think, 8 years in than it did the first couple. The first few years you really work out the kinks - or become aware of the kinks- resulting from two completely different people moving in together, living together, working together, and building a life together. There's so much "together" that it becomes apparent really quickly how much and what parts of your individual selves need to either get put aside or altered completely in order to make the concept of "us" become viable.
I'd like to do something clever like "8 in 8", but I don't have that many. So here's just a few nuggets that I've learned over the years that have rang true in our life. They say that to master something it takes approximately 10,000 hours - and 8 years is a heckuva lot more than that so obviously I've got it figured out and have NOTHING left to learn. Nothing.
1) YOUR LOVE LANGUAGES
I know a lot of people feel that you are born with a certain set of preferences and temperament characteristics that don't change and that for the most part, we are who we are for the duration of our lives.
I don't believe that.
I think humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and that with the exception of a few things, we can adapt ourselves to our situations, relationships, and circumstances though it may not be easy. Not only can we - but we need to! Life isn't always going to be ideal. Our partners aren't always going to speak our personally preferred love language loud and clear - so the more willing we are to adapt to how they are showing us love, the more loved we will feel, and the better at showing love we will be. I'm also a firm believer that as time goes on and we try our best to appreciate our partners and meet them where they are at, they will get better at communicating in our love languages also.
For instance, when we were first married, my #1 love language was Words of Affirmation. My husband is not big on that front, at all. I was always so sad that he didn't tell me he loved me 59 times a day or tell me how gorgeous I looked all the time. Once I finally realized a few years into it that it did not come naturally to him, it didn't mean that he didn't feel that way or think those things - but they manifested differently nonetheless. I started trying to look for the ways he WAS showing that he loved me - helping with the dishes, a smack on the butt as I walked by, or letting me choose where we went to dinner - that I realized he did think those things because he wouldn't treat me like that if he didn't.
I'm pleased to say that 8 years in, I appreciate not having to do the dishes after I cook a meal way more than being told, "I love you" - though I still appreciate that too!
2) SETTING GOALS
Personally, if we're not climbing a well-defined and massive mountain together, we feel like we're stagnating. This has been true our entire married life. The funny thing is, the first few years we didn't have to think about what those mountains were. The first three - it was Jeff's grad school, and my bachelors degree. Immediately after that, we got hit with infertility and spent the next three years chasing a solution to that through every clinic and treatment we could get our hands on. The last two years.... have proven to be much different. We had a child, we had no more school, we had jobs, we had a house with a figurative white picket fence.... and we had no idea what to do next or where to go. Jeff was miserable. He's one of those people whose mind craves a challenge, which means normalcy and routine does not work well for him. Once we started setting goals, breaking those goals down into actionable items and most importantly - checking OFF those items, that's when things started improving.
This doesn't make life easy, though. Super far from it. If normalcy, routine, and consistency is comfortable, growth and progress are about as far from that as you can get. When we are in the middle of it - the fighting to get to wherever it is we have set our minds to getting - test us in just about every way imaginable. BUT - accomplishing these things and getting to enjoy the fruits of those stressful times is worth it.
3) LEAVE HOME
One of our favorite things to do is go on vacation - and that happens to be one of the things we are the WORST at. We're not good at planning - historically we've both been workaholics who are afraid to not be at work. In our 8 years, we've gone on 2 true vacations - one cruise in 2015, and then on a 4 day trip to Yellowstone this year. Both times, we've come back and been like, "DUDE?! Why don't we do this every year?!" Why? Because there is something SO AWESOME about leaving the daily grind, going somewhere unfamiliar, and disconnecting (from phones and everything else) and rediscovering that oh hey, the people I married and/or created are actually super awesome to be around.
Take the time, spend the money, and GO DO SOMETHING FUN. You won't regret it. Your spouse won't regret it. And nobody ever complained about eating out and not cleaning up after dinner.
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| 8 years later, anniversary dinners look like this. And that's totally cool by us. |
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