My Marriage Used to Suck

Today, I’m sharing a little bit of my story. Eric and I have been married almost 14 years. I suspect we still have a lot of growing and learning to do, but in the time we’ve been married, there’s been a lot of change on both of our parts.

As I’ve shared before, our marriage didn’t start out on great terms. My husband wasn’t a Christian when we married and he married someone with a whole lottta baggage. (Me.)

Because I’m writing so often about our struggles, I feel it necessary to say that my husband and I are in a pretty good place these days. We are best friends and very much in love. However. We are also two people committed to the lifelong process of transformation into the likeness of Christ, and that can be painful. And sometimes annoying. Amen?

But, however happy we are now, I know that sharing our struggles will help other wives.

Is marriage harder than you thought it would be? Are you lost, hurting, fighting, frustrated? Bored beyond belief?

I. Have. Been. There.

More often than not, it’s been my own doing.

Because even though I’ve always had the conviction that I can’t give up, that doesn’t mean I didn’t stop trying. I’ve been too stubborn to try, too hurt to try, and too lazy to try.

And sometimes, too hormonal to try. It happens.

And seriously, even sometimes when I was trying it still sucked. There’s just no getting away from the fact that a marriage is made up of two sinful people. There will be ugly places.

Weddings, on the other hand, are beautiful. Whether you took your vows in a stained glass chapel and had a reception at a swanky hotel or you stood in front of a justice of the peace in a shabby room with threadbare carpet, it was beautiful. Because what isn’t beautiful about two people, so full of promise, pledging to live out their lives together?

I remember in the weeks before my wedding, I kept a checklist of each thing I needed to do every day so that by my wedding day, I was beautiful for my husband. I worked out, avoided sugar, used special moisturizing creams, whitened my teeth, took vitamins. I was serious about getting pretty for my honey.

My dress was a dream. We hand-picked center pieces and did the hard work of tasting dozens of cakes before settling on the locally famous Raspberry Victorian.

Oh, how I wish I’d spent even some of that time preparing for marriage.

While I was going tanning and picking out the perfect shade of toenail polish, I could have been reading books on marriage, studying my Bible, and praying for our life together. I didn’t do any of that. Probably because we were already living together. Yep, we started out all kinds of bad.

We actually got in our first fight on our honeymoon. There would be many more fights to come; loud, ridiculous, immature arguments. Over everything. Money. Sex. Housekeeping.

We had entered into our marriage with so many issues. We both had a child when we met, and there were custody issues and jealous exes to deal with. At least one in-law made their disapproval of our relationship known, causing friction between husband and wife when one spouse didn’t defend the the other. We were already in debt, having relied on credit cards to bail us out one too many times.

Sounds like a recipe for a happy first year, doesn’t it?

In spite of the circumstances, we had some wonderfully great days and passionate nights. But we also had horrible, tension-filled days and long nights talking and arguing, refusing to go to bed angry.

Somewhere in the first year of our marriage, I began to seek God and ask Him how to be a good wife. I can honestly say that even though it took a very long time for things to change, that little decision was the start of everything changing.

To be continued tomorrow. Here it is: The Question that Changed Our Marriage