I was recently having a conversation with my aunt about a marriage in our family that is struggling. In a very non-epic point of the conversation, my aunt had used the phrase "marriage is hard." Without even thinking, I responded, "yeah, I know", and the conversation continued for a brief while, until we moved on to other matters of discussion.
It's funny, all throughout my relationship with Eric, from when we started dating, to our engagement, to now, people have told us that marriage is hard. It wasn't until a day or so after my conversation with my aunt, as I was processing the conversation, that I actively thought about the moment I agreed about marriage being hard. I guess I always agreed with this statement because I didn't have the life experience necessary to have an opinion on the matter. But after giving it a few minutes of thought while assessing my experience within my 3 years of marriage, I can honestly say that marriage is not hard at all, actually it's pretty easy.
Now, you may be thinking that Eric and I just got lucky in finding each other and that we are some of the lucky few who found a spouse with an equally balanced personality to perfectly compliment our own. Trust me, this could not be farther from the truth. Our dating relationship was tumultuous. Just ask our family and friends. We were wildly different people and, although we are both Christians, we had very different views on how a marriage relationship worked.
I was an extremely selfish commitment-phobe who had the mentality of "I'll do what I want, when I want and if you don't like it, there's the door." Eric was more traditional and, if I dare say, had a North Central University "bubble" like conservative-Christian cookie cutter image of marriage.
Logic says, we shouldn't have worked out, much less be having a wonderful, easy marriage. But God clearly knew what He was doing.
As soon as we heard from the Lord that this was it (which was about 3 weeks into the relationship) we signed up for pre-marital counseling (not a class, but Eric and I with a counselor that didn't know either of us until we walked into his office). We wanted to do this as early as we could in order to know, and understand, the red flags that would arise in our relationship. This allowed us to be proactive in addressing our issues, tailor our relationship to fit us through negotiation and make the changes within ourselves necessary to have a successful marriage. But most importantly, we learned how to fight fairly. How you fight in a relationship can determine the destiny of your marriage. Eric and I took this as essential opportunity to ensure a happy life together by creating these ground rules:
1. We are never allowed to call each other names. Period. For example, we can say, "you're acting like a jerk", but we cannot say "you are a jerk". This may seem like a trivial nuance, but by doing this, it allows us to comment on the other's current behavior rather than attack each others character. Nothing, short of infidelity, will erode a marriage faster than attacking your spouses character. Limit your fighting words to the behavior, not the person.
2. We are not allowed to storm off and leave over night. When we get into a fight at home, we cannot go stay over night somewhere else. Our intention for this is to reduce the drama and to protect each other's character. If I were to storm off and go stay with a friend, I would then have to explain to them what happened. More likely than not, I would still have the fresh emotions of the argument and present an unbalanced perspective of what happened while tarnishing Eric's character with that friend. Protecting each other's character is essential in having an easy/healthy marriage, but does require a lot of self control in those moments.
3. Ask and apologize if there is a misunderstanding regarding your tone or word choice. I really struggled with this one at first. There are many times when I meant to say things one way, but Eric heard them another way. He would get upset and I would become confused. When we talked about it, I would defend my position and blame his misinterpretation, which, of course, did not help the situation.
I learned early on that it doesn't really matter how you intend to say something, but rather, how the other person interprets what you say. It is the speaker's obligation to get his/her message across in the manner in which they meant it.
Eric and I have found that a great way around this one, because I often mis-match my tone and my meaning. The key is for him to simply ask me. Eric knows I don't ever intentionally try to hurt him, so when something I say strikes him as hurtful, he just asks me if that's how I meant it. Every time, I have said "not at all, I'm sorry it came off that way." This gives me an opportunity to clarify what I meant. That's it, no fight. Simple as that.
4. Find a balance between talking the problem out in the moment and waiting until the emotions have subsided. Eric likes to talk things out in the moment because he would rather get the fight over with rather than drag it out longer than necessary. I, on the other hand, like to wait until our emotions have subsided so we may have a logic based discussion. The reality is, that with a little balance, we can have both. We have learned to find the in-between time where we still have enough emotion to communicate the hurt, but also enough logic to admit when we are wrong.
Those 4 rules took a while for us to really get down, but now have become second nature. Because of them, our arguments are few and far between, but when they do happen, they really don't last long.
If you're married, try them. If you're dating or engaged, start these now. Regardless of where you are in a relationship, remember..............marriage doesn't need to be hard.
