The Impossible Marriage
I think the reason people have a hard time describing marriage is that its impossible. not to describe it. I mean marriage itself is impossible. by the time you meet your person the two of you have been nicked, spun, carved, gashed and inflated in a million different ways. and now you're supposed to join these two pieces together like drops of water.
I was talking to my friend and life coach this week and she was asking me about my goals for my marriage. I said to her (I wish I was joking but I wasn't) "To not get divorced."
we were talking about goals and dreams and the desires of my heart and here I was saying that my goal for marriage was to survive it. sounds romantic, huh? But if you've lived inside my marriage for the past 8 months you would know that not getting divorced is a huge accomplishment.
I've found myself texting married friends asking "Is your marriage this hard too?"
I've looked long and hard at this issue of marriage. I've asked friends, listened to podcasts, joined facebook groups and read books and articles.
And this is what I've realized. I got married traumatized. I got married with the little girl mentality that a wedding would fix my life and I wouldn't have to think about what comes next - which is the actual marriage part. If you knew me while I was engaged maybe you knew I had serious grief and anxiety surrounding getting married. I threw myself into controlling every detail of our wedding (which looking back is not what I would do again) so that it would be as small and quiet as possible. I didn't want the celebration, the people, the white dress or even the daylight because I didn't know how to celebrate love. I thought if I could make this a small, spiritual moment then it would be ok.
So I got married grasping at straws, barely holding on to this façade that was my life. I got married out of desperation, no where near prepared. And when that is the start to your marriage it should serve as a warning for things ahead.
Marriage is impossible but then what's the alternative? To live life without him? Better to not live at all. So then, stuck between two impossibilities, you go for love. at first you fling yourself. you don't realize the enormity of the task you've taken on
Marriage has a way of creating epic shifts in a person's life. I was told in an abuse recovery group that intimacy is a catalyst for healing. Which I heard and didn't think anything of until I was newly married, in this new kind of intimate relationship, and everything from my past was rising up.
So within weeks I was newly married and swimming in PTSD and anxiety and depression. Basically the recipe for a perfect marriage, right?
Within a matter of months I watched the life I had tried to so perfectly maintain fall apart. It ended up being a good thing, and great healing has come from it, and is continuing to happen. But its hard and scary and I feel like I was just thrown out of one of those spinny rides at the carnival with my entire life being flipped upside down. I don't even know how to be a person right now let alone be married. I'm not the same girl I was 8 months ago when I said I do. Which leaves me to look at this person I married and think "Why did I fall in love with you? Why did I marry you?"
You start slamming your lives together and the pieces don't fit. How can they not fit? The disagreements. the couple he loves and you don't. the job you want and he doesn't. where do you want to go? I don't care. Why are you being like this? What do you mean? are you sure you're ok? Behind each question, a small disappointment: I thought we fit. But that's the secret. People don't fit. Nobody does. Marriage is impossible.
So we sit here, two entirely different people than the people who said I do. people for whom still being married feels like a huge accomplishment. Sometimes I look at us and think we lost the people we used to be, the two kids who were in love and went on crazy adventures and couldn't get enough of each other. We're doing everything right now - the house and the jobs and the signed piece of paper saying we got married - but where did those two people crazy in love go?
I want to tell you the truth. I have spent a lot of time crying and saying I don't want to be married anymore. Healing inside a marriage is HARD. It is next to impossible. Some days he'll look at you and ask "Where is the girl I married?" And you won't have an answer for him because you don't know. You will look at yourself and ask "Why did I get married?"
I say if I have any advice for myself before I got married it would be don't do it. Not because marriage is that impossibly bad but because I was no where near ready to be married. I was getting married out of desperation instead of love.
So here we are. Two entirely different people than the people who got married who are, by some small miracle, still married.
I feel like we are introducing ourselves to each other again. We're figuring out how to make all the pieces work when we're not who we used to be.
We stand in front of each other with our true selves, the people we are now and say to each other "Here I am." Every. single. day.
So we do the impossible. we fit our lives together slowly, methodically, every day. start with the feet. find the knobs and pinches. fit them where you can. don't mash them. don't fling yourself. don't assume. don't skip a step. find comfort in each other - the hollows you can fill. this is happiness. the best shot you've got. we fit. we do. against all odds we fit. little by little, over time, every day, we're forming and re-forming. we're finding how two become one. its slow business but when you look back you realize how far you've come. what a miracle you've created. how deliriously, beautifully happy life is.
Quotes in Italics from the most comfortable position by Tyler Huckabee
I was talking to my friend and life coach this week and she was asking me about my goals for my marriage. I said to her (I wish I was joking but I wasn't) "To not get divorced."
we were talking about goals and dreams and the desires of my heart and here I was saying that my goal for marriage was to survive it. sounds romantic, huh? But if you've lived inside my marriage for the past 8 months you would know that not getting divorced is a huge accomplishment.
I've found myself texting married friends asking "Is your marriage this hard too?"
I've looked long and hard at this issue of marriage. I've asked friends, listened to podcasts, joined facebook groups and read books and articles.
And this is what I've realized. I got married traumatized. I got married with the little girl mentality that a wedding would fix my life and I wouldn't have to think about what comes next - which is the actual marriage part. If you knew me while I was engaged maybe you knew I had serious grief and anxiety surrounding getting married. I threw myself into controlling every detail of our wedding (which looking back is not what I would do again) so that it would be as small and quiet as possible. I didn't want the celebration, the people, the white dress or even the daylight because I didn't know how to celebrate love. I thought if I could make this a small, spiritual moment then it would be ok.
So I got married grasping at straws, barely holding on to this façade that was my life. I got married out of desperation, no where near prepared. And when that is the start to your marriage it should serve as a warning for things ahead.
Marriage is impossible but then what's the alternative? To live life without him? Better to not live at all. So then, stuck between two impossibilities, you go for love. at first you fling yourself. you don't realize the enormity of the task you've taken on
Marriage has a way of creating epic shifts in a person's life. I was told in an abuse recovery group that intimacy is a catalyst for healing. Which I heard and didn't think anything of until I was newly married, in this new kind of intimate relationship, and everything from my past was rising up.
So within weeks I was newly married and swimming in PTSD and anxiety and depression. Basically the recipe for a perfect marriage, right?
Within a matter of months I watched the life I had tried to so perfectly maintain fall apart. It ended up being a good thing, and great healing has come from it, and is continuing to happen. But its hard and scary and I feel like I was just thrown out of one of those spinny rides at the carnival with my entire life being flipped upside down. I don't even know how to be a person right now let alone be married. I'm not the same girl I was 8 months ago when I said I do. Which leaves me to look at this person I married and think "Why did I fall in love with you? Why did I marry you?"
You start slamming your lives together and the pieces don't fit. How can they not fit? The disagreements. the couple he loves and you don't. the job you want and he doesn't. where do you want to go? I don't care. Why are you being like this? What do you mean? are you sure you're ok? Behind each question, a small disappointment: I thought we fit. But that's the secret. People don't fit. Nobody does. Marriage is impossible.
So we sit here, two entirely different people than the people who said I do. people for whom still being married feels like a huge accomplishment. Sometimes I look at us and think we lost the people we used to be, the two kids who were in love and went on crazy adventures and couldn't get enough of each other. We're doing everything right now - the house and the jobs and the signed piece of paper saying we got married - but where did those two people crazy in love go?
I want to tell you the truth. I have spent a lot of time crying and saying I don't want to be married anymore. Healing inside a marriage is HARD. It is next to impossible. Some days he'll look at you and ask "Where is the girl I married?" And you won't have an answer for him because you don't know. You will look at yourself and ask "Why did I get married?"
I say if I have any advice for myself before I got married it would be don't do it. Not because marriage is that impossibly bad but because I was no where near ready to be married. I was getting married out of desperation instead of love.
So here we are. Two entirely different people than the people who got married who are, by some small miracle, still married.
I feel like we are introducing ourselves to each other again. We're figuring out how to make all the pieces work when we're not who we used to be.
We stand in front of each other with our true selves, the people we are now and say to each other "Here I am." Every. single. day.
So we do the impossible. we fit our lives together slowly, methodically, every day. start with the feet. find the knobs and pinches. fit them where you can. don't mash them. don't fling yourself. don't assume. don't skip a step. find comfort in each other - the hollows you can fill. this is happiness. the best shot you've got. we fit. we do. against all odds we fit. little by little, over time, every day, we're forming and re-forming. we're finding how two become one. its slow business but when you look back you realize how far you've come. what a miracle you've created. how deliriously, beautifully happy life is.
Quotes in Italics from the most comfortable position by Tyler Huckabee
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