Six Reasons My Marriage is Awesome

First of all, let me just say that I started my marriage off awesome. I married my best friend. What more could you want? However, after almost eight years we have definitely experienced our fair share of ups and downs, but the truth remains that I still believe my marriage to be awesome. It is, just trust me on this. After pondering mine and my husband’s relationship, there are certain elements and dynamics shared between us that I believe to contribute to our awesomeness, and I wanted to share them with the world. After many years together, we are still going strong and here are a few things I have learned over the years that have helped ensure we stick together.

1. We don’t depend on our spouse to make us happy. This is easier said than done. Especially since I am a military wife, and there have been many times throughout our marriage when I have known absolutely no one aside from my loving husband who heads off to work everyday. I often did not talk to another adult for many days other than my husband, but I do not depend on him for my happiness. He has bad days, I have bad days, but we are our own people responsible for our own emotions and reactions to life’s challenges. I didn’t always know this, but it is a fact that serves me well today.

2. We both constantly work at becoming better people. We both love new challenges. We like to pursue goals, and it keeps things fresh and exciting. We like to take on new fitness challenges and routines. My husband discusses the goals he wants to achieve in his career, and I talk about what I want to do after I finish school. Maybe we’ll learn a new language together, or save up to take the family somewhere we’ve always dreamed about. Who knows? The sky is the limit, and it keeps the spark and attraction to each other alive and well.

3. We both forgive easily and daily. This is a big one. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with my husband, and why we never go to bed angry. We argue regularly. We are both pretty outspoken people about our opinions and ideas involving daily situations. However, we never storm off mad at each other. It’s almost like my husband and I cannot leave the conversation unfinished if we are still upset, and it has been the reason our struggles get resolved. We don’t stay mad. We discuss it, maybe argue a bit, but we get over it. Plain and simple. It’s amazing.

4. We don’t complain about our marital problems to others, or fight in front of company. I remember sitting at a friends with my husband. She and her husband were in the middle of a heated argument, and my husband and I were there to witness everything. They treated each other pretty badly while we were there, and I began feeling sorry for them. It was embarrassing to watch, and I was forever grateful my husband and I put on our best faces when need be. Needless to say, we still work through it behind closed doors, but why make other people uncomfortable?  

5. He’s accepting of me and my endeavors, and I’m accepting of his. When my husband and I got married we were very young, 19 years old to be exact. Over the years we have changed as people. Many times I hear people who are getting divorced say that “she changed” or “he’s not the person I married.” Isn’t that a good thing? Would I want my 19 year old husband raising our children, or making our financial decisions? Of course, not. After about three years of marriage, I decided to start going to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was baptized at age 8, but was never active in my older years. This was a big decision for me to make because it affected my marriage and how we bring up our children. My husband is not LDS, but he has supported my thoughtful decision 100%. I also trust him enough to make his own decision. Of course, I can tell you that this decision has been amazing for our family, which is why the kids and I continue to go to church… but it wasn’t easy for our lifestyle to shift. He has been amazing through it all!

6. Even without date nights, we still make time for each other. We both love being in each other’s company, but we rarely ever have time alone. We don’t trust easily when it comes to finding sitters, since we move a lot and don’t know people well. However, we are the type of people to take the whole family to go and grab diapers from the store, and then we’ll take a nice 5 minute drive around, enjoying the family’s company. When the kids are in bed, we love sitting together, maybe I’ll sit on the kitchen counter top while he has something to eat, and we just talk about everything. We enjoy being together. We are also still physically and mentally affectionate, and we feel that our marriage is just as important as our relationship with our children. We don’t want our relationship to dwindle due to our parental demands, so we always try to make time for each other romantically.

Well there are many reasons why our marriage continues to be awesome through the years, but I’m going to leave it at that for now. If you have reasons of your own as to why your marriage is amazing, I would love to hear ideas and inspiration. Marriage is something that has to be worked at everyday, and we can always learn new ways to improve our own marriages through personal reflection. Thanks for reading!

“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one’s companion.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Stand a Little Taller