Marriage – The Difference A Week Makes

You know what I thought the hardest thing about having a relationship was (before I got married)?

Having to say goodbye.

Can you believe it?  How young and ignorant I was.  And well, I was 20 when we got married, so I’m not just saying that.  It’s totally true.  That first year of marriage was just, wow.  A lot.  Having not lived together before getting hitched, that first year was a year of finding our feet.

But ten years later we’ve found our groove and for the most part things plod along pretty smoothly.  After lots of arguments, passive aggressive comments and out right ignoring each other for stretches of time in between the freaking crazy that goes with having three kids, we have worked out who does what in our lives to ensure that we aren’t constantly bickering about every last little thing.

Although now that I think about it, I’m still not sure whose job it is is to pack the dishwasher, but that’s a debate for another day.

Technically we’ve got it all pretty waxed.  So waxed that life tends to keep going on auto pilot.  We go into default mode.  Routine.  And usually routine is pretty mundane and boring, but it’s a routine because it works.  It takes care of the kids, the house and each other.  Somehow there’s time for the things that matter and those things can then get the right amount of attention.

But this last couple of weeks we have been heavily out of routine.  So much so that I realised that we had gone over a week without really sharing what was going on in our lives with each other.

It wasn’t even anything sinister, we were doing what we usually do and that’s work together as a team towards a goal.  This particular goal was the Camping Party we had last weekend.

Whenever we have functions we go into home decor mode.  Cleaning up those piles of crap that just seem to appear out of nowhere but have in actual fact been growing there since the last party.  You know that pile right?  Well there’s loads of those piles around our house, in our garden and in spaces we’d use to entertain.  So we usually divide and conquer – I tackle inside (including party decor) and Seth takes care of everything outside.  Which this year included the PlayMansion (this will eventually get its own post.  When it’s done.  Like 10 years from now when the solar heating, composting toilet and wood burner have been approved.  And I’m only half joking).

The thing with the PlayMansion is that if it wasn’t ready by the party, there was a good chance that some little people would be falling off and breaking their sweet little necks.  Not the kind of party entertainment we had in mind.  So Seth literally spent the majority of his time trying to make it safe.  When he wasn’t doing that he was trying to make up for lost time with the kids.  And when he wasn’t do that he was working.  On my side I was in full party planning mode.  Working at random hours of the day and night to make sure that my work didn’t suffer and just generally not really with it.  (Due to a number of things, not just the party because this makes it sound like I hate throwing parties but it really is something I love.  It can just be stressful).

The result is that we were passing each other like ships in the night.

And we paid the price of that in such a weird way.  Suddenly I was second guessing everything he said to me.  I was short with him.  Irritated.  And our relationship suffered.  We still got everything done that we needed to get done but the expense was losing a bit of love or should I say, like, for each other in subtle little ways.

Then one night we were lying in bed and we both expressed how we were feeling unloved and like we hadn’t connected in ages.  Suddenly we were over it.  Having normal conversations again and restoring the lost like that had gotten a bit forgotten in the last week.

And it just made me remember how hard marriage really is.  It’s definitely not all sunshine and moon farts.