The First Year of Marriage

It has taken me two months to sit down and write this the way I feel it needs to be written. Marriage is a lot. It’s a lifelong commitment to one person, a person who isn’t perfect. I have many flaws and some haven’t made an appearance until recently. My Husband has faulted in many areas of our relationship. As humans we are imperfect creatures who are trying our best everyday to love the person we chose to spend forever with. The first year of Marriage is about learning. The first year of my Marriage was about learning how to handle each others faults through loss. We both made mistakes, we both did not know how to help each other in an impossible emotional situation, and we are both still fighting to figure that out.

October 15, 2020 was one of the happiest days of my life. I married my forever love. We had never faced really hard circumstances in our 3 year relationship, the start of the fourth was even better than we thought. I let the, “First year of Marriage is the hardest” statement roll off of me. It wasn’t until the summer did I realize how hard it was going to get. I want to say that I do not believe in the above statement. It does not apply to everyone. I think that you are always going to have hard times no matter what year of marriage you are in. I think the statement is a little outdated and may apply to some and in our case it may look like it, although we do not know what the future holds. I love my Husband more than anything in the world. I still struggle. I have insecurities and incorrect thoughts caused by my tendency to overthink any situation. My insecurities have caused emotional and mental turmoil in myself as well as a strain on the relationship I have with my spouse. I am not perfect and I feel the need for reassurance, a trait my Husband lacks. I do believe that Love Languages are a real things, but I read something my cousin shared a few weeks ago that made me rethink how I believe these forms of love should be accepted.

As a man , I can tell you that most of them are NOT romantic, it’s simply not in them, but just because your man doesn’t love you the way you wish he would doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. You want flowers, probably not going to happen but he will go out in the middle of the storm to see why the roof is leaking. You want him to light candles, not going to happen but he will make sure your car has good tires & the oil is changed. He probably isn’t going to plan a weekend getaway but will make sure the grass gets mowed. Chances are he won’t ever write you a poem but he will be the first one to teach your kid how to play ball. You know what, the the truth is, it’s easy to buy a woman some perfume & take her to see a romantic movie, any guy can do that but it’s the day in & day out boring mundane chores that’s hard to find someone to do. It’s easy to “love” someone for for the first year, but very few are willing to love you for 5 years, 10 years or 25 years. Listen , just because love doesn’t come in a pretty little package with a bow on it doesn’t mean that it’s not love. Just because it doesn’t look like you thought it would doesn’t make it any less meaningful. If you want to know what love looks like, don’t look at the hallmark cards, look for the guy that went out in the cold to start your car up so it would be warm when you leave. That’s love! Anyone can buy you a gift, few are willing to sacrifice & serve. Don’t overlook true love looking for fairy tales.

I do not know who wrote this, but I know that God put it there for me to see. I have been struggling in this area and putting too much stock in what Love Languages are and how they are used. When I should have been trusting God to show me his love and not rely on my worldly Husband to always get it right. What is funny is that I have been a Christian my entire life, but it hasn’t been until recently that I have noticed how much he is around. You hear stories of Miracles and feeling his presence, but I could never remember a time when that was true for me. Now I can see and hear and feel what he is doing. It comes in ways you might not be looking for. This post is just one of them. The words above are scary accurate to the way Brandon shows me love… those are ways that I have never looked for and perceived as love. I accept love in the form of affirmations and physical touch, I have always thought that this is what I need to feel and be loved. I was wrong. I have always known that Brandon loves me, I would tell myself all the time he is doing these things because he loves me, just because it isn’t the way I want to be shown love, doesn’t mean that it isn’t. The problem was that I never truly believed what I was telling myself. I was so hung up on getting what I wanted. This year wasn’t just about learning in my Marriage, but it was also a lesson in realization and acceptance for my own selfish flaws. I am not perfect and never will be. I will still continue to have these thoughts and insecurities and doubts intermediately, but it will not be as before.

The first year of Marriage for my relationship was about flying high and suddenly crashing. We were the happiest we had ever been, some may call this the Honeymoon stage. All I knew is that my relationship was amazing. We had so many things going for us; we never fought, only argued like most couples do; (the good kind of arguing that leads into other things) we bought our first home for a steal, even though we thought we weren’t going to get it at first; we continued to date each other while still enjoying our outside friendships; we decided to start trying and we conceived on the first try. We were happy… and then we lost what we both wanted more than anything. We both lost emotionally. I lost emotionally, physically, and mentally. The side effects of which are still lingering. Suddenly we lost what we had been feeling just a week prior. I felt like everything was falling apart and I was loosing myself in the process. I felt like I was loosing my Husband. (NOT LITERALLY) We became really close during the loss, but when the immediate happening passed we pulled apart. It was needed in some ways, but hurt in others. We grieve differently and needed to figure that out on our own. The irony is, I hate being alone when I am hurting. We stopped actually talking (deep conversation, not day to day mundane things) when we did it was an argument. One of us fighting the other trying to get their point across instead of really listening to the other. You would think the worst part of a Miscarriage is the actual miscarriage… it isn’t. What comes after it hurt me the most. He had never fought me on my emotions before. He would listen and do one of two things, try and make it better or let it resonate and come back at a later time with a solution. I felt like a crazy person because I could feel that there was a problem and we needed to talk, but he acted like there wasn’t anything wrong. I lost emotionally, physically, and mentally. Something that Brandon will never be able to understand because he has never had to go through it himself. No man has. No man can.

For our one year Wedding Anniversary we tried to replicate our favorite trip that we took together, the first trip that we ever took together. Atlanta was crazy packed and the city passes were a great idea. The entire trip was a great idea, it was perfect… in theory. We never imagined that we would be trying to celebrate one of the happiest and major milestones in our relationship while also grieving from the very recent loss of 2 babies. I put a lot of expectation into this trip. For weeks I had been looking forward to it. I had been labeling it as this is what we need for our relationship. This is what is going to make it better. Some alone time reminiscing and being romantic and actually having deep conversation. Not much of that happened. There were so many babies and small children. So many that it got to the point that I almost regretted going. Something that even Brandon acknowledged. I tried covering up how hurt I was by taking photos and trying to focus on other things, but it just made me cranky and focus on expectations that weren’t really met. I spent most of the trip moody and wanting specifics that never happened. I remember a particular moment when we were at the zoo, a little girl was being carried by her dad and he said something. When his baby girl heard what he had said she took her small blonde head off of his shoulder and said in the sweetest small voice, “I wanna see the Tiger.” I started crying right there in the hot sun surrounded by a lot of people. I hid my face well and silently let tears roll. The first day was rough and I mean rough. Don’t get me wrong there were a lot of moments in-between the heartache that I really enjoyed. For instance our Anniversary dinner at Cut’s Steakhouse. I was worried it was not going to go well because it was pretty fancy and Brandon is not a fancy guy, but he tried and he actually enjoyed himself. The food was amazing and I actually ate most of Brandon’s meal and mine. The smile on his face when he kept placing food from his fork onto my dish. He was happy and laughing and enjoying how giddy I was. Definitely going down as one of the best date nights in our relationship.

The aquarium was packed and neither one of us were in a good mood. (Brandon does not like crowds) There were again lots of kids, but I did NOT CRY this time. Dinner was good that night too and the drinks were even better. The best activity we did was the Coca-Cola factory, I was feeling really weird and not in the best spirits, but I was trying and Brandon was too. It felt awkward, but at the same time fun. (if that makes sense) Then we drove home… We are not done grieving or healing. Sometimes the process is long. Sometimes you think that you are okay and the next crying in front of hundreds of strangers. Everyone’s process is different. Don’t be ashamed of that process, embrace it and move forward.

Recently, like the past four weeks, have been much better. I can’t tell you what changed or why. We stopped fighting each other about our emotions. No one can tell you how to feel, there is no right or wrong answer to your grieving process. I let it all out for what felt like the millionth time to Brandon, I was nervous because I know how things have been lately and I did not know how he was going to react, to my surprise he knew exactly what to say… he knew exactly what to do. Our communication is finally changing for the better. Our goal is to be better than it was before, a goal that is going to take time and effort and fails, but eventually we will be stronger than before. A feeling that is starting to appear. No Marriage is perfect because no human is perfect. It’s trial and error until something works. It’s about choosing to love your partner everyday through their flaws and their insecurities. This year has been hard. I am grateful for what we have gone through because it has changed us for the better. We have grown as individuals and we are working on growing together as a couple. Marriage is a lot of things, there is still a lot we have yet to learn and experience. My first year of Marriage was about love and loss, navigating through the emotions personally and committedly.

I had to take you from where you thought you needed to be to a place you didn’t want to see, so that you’d grow into the person I called you to be. -God

I saw this as a post on Instagram and saved it. It’s funny how social media turned from something I was ready to get rid of to a place I could find hope in my mental state. I believe the statement above is very true and has definitely applied to us lately. One thing Brandon and I did while going through this chapter of loss is get semi matching tattoos for our angels. This gesture meant a lot to me because it is something I was addiment about, something that made me feel as if my babies were still with me. This act brought a lot of love into our relationship. It made us remember that we lost the same thing, just not in the same way. We are connected. My marriage isn’t perfect, we have issues. My marriage isn’t a fairytale… it is real and it is true love. The first year of Marriage is only the beginning…

October 15, 2020

Our Wedding Day 🤍

October 15, 2021

Our one year Wedding Anniversary 🤍