We get married for all kinds of reasons. Love. Security. Children. Fear. Loneliness.
We might take that walk down the aisle as early as high school graduation or as late as in the fall or winter seasons of our lives.
Maybe we chose our high school sweetheart, our best friend, a coworker, someone we met in Sunday School, or even a person from our past who becomes our future.
Some us had great examples of solid marriages to look to in our own parents and mentors. Others of us saw what we didn’t want to become and vowed to do marriage differently. But no matter why, when, or with whom we take the plunge, most of us are nowhere close to understanding what it really means to tie that lifetime knot.
Out of a desperate need to belong somewhere and to someone, a few months after I turned twenty-one, I married my high school sweetheart. Still in college, reeling from my parent’s nasty divorce, I was clueless about life, relationships, and what it took to sustain a marriage. I didn’t know who I was as a person, let alone how to be a good spouse.
But I jumped in headfirst, blindfolded, and totally naïve—in love with the idea of being in love. Who wouldn’t get excited about candles, romance, whispered endearments, and hours of staring into each other’s eyes? I was all over goofy pet names. Holding hands. Never-ending hugs. Butterflies leaping through my stomach. Basically, I expected my marriage to remain in the honeymoon phase.
My honeymoon phase lasted as long as my honeymoon—exactly three days.
When my husband and I returned home from our short getaway and settled in to our apartment for our first night as a married couple, we were prepared. We had the required rings on our fingers, a store’s worth of candles lit around the bedroom, one silky nightgown, and a King-sized bed.
A guaranteed happily ever after, right?
Not so much.
Sometime between lighting those candles and donning the nightgown, I got the flu—double-over-the-porcelain-bowl-gut-wrenching flu. Cue my husband sweeping in to save me. Rubbing my back. Holding my hair. Whispering how sorry he was.
Only that’s not quite what happened.
Instead, my brand-new husband abandoned me on the cold tile floor while he fell asleep sprawled across our bed next to my cat—killing every single expectation I ever had about how marriage worked.
I’d even left the bathroom door open so I’d be easy to rescue. I mean, what was his problem? Couldn’t he hear the horrendous retching? The sobbing? The SOS I silently sent? And wasn’t it his job to take care of me? Be my champion. My knight. Hadn’t he signed up to meet all my needs the day he signed our marriage certificate?
Due to my backward way of thinking, wondering what he could do for me and not the other way around, the first fifteen years of our marriage can be summed up in one word—rough.
