This past Sunday Michael and I celebrated our one year anniversary! What a year it has been. Marriage is awesome, but it’s also tough! While I wasn’t terribly surprised that there were a lot of challenges, I was surprised at what some of those challenges were. In hindsight it seems like they were pretty obvious things, but experiencing them for the first time felt like walking in the dark!
I definitely had some misconceptions about marriage, which is probably pretty normal, but still. I got a lot of marriage advice prior to getting married, but there were moments in the past year that I thought to myself, “how did I miss this?” On the other hand, some things in life you just can’t understand until you’re there – many of which I have yet to learn.
But I’m thankful for what I’ve learned in the past year, and that’s what I want to share with you today. So no more rambling, here’s what I learned from year one:
1. Marriage isn’t about getting your own needs met
Everyone goes into marriage with at least some expectation of having their needs met, and that’s not all bad. Marriage certainly does meet some of our core needs. But marriage doesn’t meet all of your needs all the time. When I’m feeling empty or lacking, it’s easiest to turn to my husband, wanting him to fulfill me. But that’s a huge burden for him to carry, as well as a set up for disappointment for me.
As I shared in my post, Singleness: What I Wish I’d Known Part 1, I expected marriage to fix me and complete me. I spent a lot of time and energy fighting for myself, feeling disappointed and even angry because my needs weren’t met. I was approaching my marriage as the mechanism by which I was made full. After some fighting and failing (and prayer), I now realize that’s not what marriage is about.
There’s vulnerability in putting your needs aside. It takes courage, selflessness, and trust. But that’s what we’re called to do. We were made to go to Jesus to be filled, and then pour ourselves into others, including and especially our spouse! It’s so difficult, especially in the moment, to make the conscious decision to put aside what I want and think about my husband first. But when I don’t, things usually go sideways. When I do, I feel peace, freedom, and joy.
This whole marriage thing? It’s not about us, it’s about Jesus. It’s about walking in obedience to him. When we choose to walk according to God’s design, we experience the blessing of that.
2. Your spouse isn’t going to meet all your needs
I’m really grateful for the ways that my husband does fulfill me, for the ways he does meet my needs. But even in the moments when we’re both doing everything we should do, and we’re pouring ourselves into each other, we still don’t meet all of each other’s needs.
As much as that seems like a real bummer, it’s actually really a blessing. Why? Isn’t it disappointing when your spouse doesn’t meet your needs? It does feel that way.
But you know what? I’m grateful that my husband doesn’t meet all of my needs.
Say whaaaat? Yes, that’s what I said.
If my husband met all of my needs, I wouldn’t need God. If my husband met all of my needs, I would stop going to Jesus. What a tragedy that would be. There’s nothing – nothing – that compares with the relationship we have with the Lord. His love is greater, His grace is greater, His promises are greater, and the life He has given us is greater. He is greater. There is greater beauty, joy, and fullness in Christ than any fulfillment outside of Him.
So it’s OK that our spouse doesn’t meet all of our needs, yeah?
3. Being married isn’t an automatic adjustment. This takes time! And effort, too.
This one kinda makes me laugh because I thought adjusting would be a breeze. But things didn’t quite work out that way. Adjusting to marriage took a lot longer than I thought it would. In fact, it was about seven months before we felt like we finally started feeling adjusted and were really enjoying being married (with the exception of the honeymoon stage, that is, before “normal” life hits). The first seven months were full of adjustments, long conversations, a lot of emotions (mostly on my side) and more adjustments. Just to find out who needed what, what things were important and not important to each of us, how to work those things into busy schedules, and learning to work our habits and schedules to the benefit of our marriage, rather than naturally drifting to living two separate lives together.
There’s absolutely the sweetness and excitement that go with being newly married, but it’s a lot of work too. Just know adjusting will take some time and that’s OK!
4. You need post-marital counseling
During the first year when everything’s new and you don’t really have anything to compare to, it’s hard to know what’s normal and what’s not. We found ourselves on multiple occasions wondering if the problems we were having were really a problem or just typical newlywed stuff. It’s scary thinking something’s “wrong” with your marriage when it’s just getting started.
In hindsight, we really wished we’d gotten post-marital counseling. In fact, we think it would have been just as beneficial, if not more beneficial that premarital counseling (you should definitely get premarital counseling though!). Everyone told us the first year of marriage is the hardest – but what the heck did that mean? What did we need to be watching for? How could we be equipped for it?
Working with a counselor can give insight into navigating those typical “first year” issues. When we eventually got some counsel about 10 months in, we were so relieved to hear that the things we were experiencing were typical first year issues. It took a lot of pressure off of us, knowing that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, and to have some help navigating new waters.
We highly recommend going to regular counseling for the first year!
5. It’s hard to give all of yourself to your spouse, but you need to.
During our marriage ceremony, my pastor charged me with the following words: “give all of yourself to him – don’t hold anything back.” That was the wisest counsel I’ve ever gotten for my marriage. There are times, especially when I’m hurt, that I don’t want to share things with my husband, I don’t want to open up. But that always creates a divide in our marriage. We’re made to be one, to know each other deeply, and to give ourselves fully to one another. And, my husband didn’t marry just part of me – he married all of me. Making yourself vulnerable is scary, but that’s where intimacy is created. The most beautiful and fulfilling times in marriage is when we give ourselves fully to one another – holding nothing back.
6. Marriage is different than dating
I thought marriage was going to be like dating with extra privileges. You’d get to do all the things you did in dating, but you wouldn’t have to say goodbye at the end of the day, wake up alone, or catch up over the phone all the time, etc.. And while those things are true, marriage isn’t like dating.
When you’re married, you get the pleasure of doing all the mundane things in life together.
Yay! Not as exciting as going on dates all the time, huh? You’ll certainly continue dating, but marriage is also about the ordinary – and that’s an adjustment from your previous experience with each other.
Feelings change.
Pretty much everything feels exciting when you’re dating. It’s only a matter of time before those feelings can start to wear off. I’m not saying marriage is boring, but the emotional highs will probably be less frequent. You know what you get instead though? A deep, faithful love that can only be experienced in the safety of marriage!
Learning each other when married is different than learning each other when dating.
Dating getting-to-know-each other is fun and exciting and new. Marriage getting-to-know-each other, while still really special, is a little different. You learn much deeper things about one another. Sometimes they’re ugly things, things that need some hard work to address. It can be uncomfortable. It may not feel as exciting as when you were dating, but it’s so meaningful and important. While we sometimes wish things were fun or easy all the time, we wouldn’t grow or learn from that. And that’s the beauty of marriage. You see things you didn’t see before, you have a best friend to come along side you to support you, and you’re stronger and healthier for it.
You may be thinking marriage doesn’t sound fun at all! But let me tell you – marriage has it’s perks! Marriage isn’t always happy and exciting and fun, but marriage does have a depth, beauty, and meaning that you can’t get from dating.
7. Connecting with your spouse is hard
We communicated fairly well when we were dating, and connecting wasn’t all that hard. However, men and women see things very differently, and that seems to be amplified in marriage (at least that’s been my experience). We have different needs, we go about things differently, and we come from very different places (men come from space, you know? JK!).
You know what that means? Connecting is challenging! Harder than I thought it’d be. We’ve had the hardest time connecting emotionally. While there are things that we’ve found that help us (which I will be sharing in a future post for sure!), it’s also a very personal thing. The “how” varies from couple to couple. Figuring out what that looks like for you takes a lot of practice, communication, mistakes, and a ton of time. The key here – be patient with one another and never give up!
8. You have to talk about expectations
Expectations are a big big deal in relationships, especially marriage. In one of our premarital counseling sessions, the counselor asked me what expectations I had for a morning routine once we got married. I honestly answered that I didn’t know. I knew I probably had expectations about that, but I wouldn’t really know what those expectations were until I got there. And I believe that’s true for a lot of things in marriage.
Sometimes we know what our expectations are and sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes we get to the other side of a situation and realize we had expectations that we didn’t know we had before it happened.
And we even have expectations about expectations (like expecting yourself to have realistic expectations all the time).
Kinda complicated? Yeah.
That’s why is so important to be able to talk about them. Talk about expectations you have now, talk about what you feel when you realized you expected something but didn’t know until the situation passed, talk about it when your expectations change.
I’ve gotten frustrated when something happened and it didn’t meet my expectations, but I didn’t even realize that I expected that certain thing to be a certain way or happen in a certain way. I’d beat myself up for not knowing beforehand. But that only made things worse.
Expectations are a funny thing. You really can’t expect to always know what you expect.
And that’s perfectly OK. So give yourself, and each other some grace, and always, always keep an open conversation about expectations.
Final Thoughts
Marriage isn’t perfect, it’s a lot of work, and there are ups and downs. But I wouldn’t trade it. Before I got married, one of my girlfriends told me, “Marriage is SO refining! You’re gonna love it.” At that time, I had no idea how refining it is, or how much I would love it. It’s a funny thing – to love something that tests and tries you every day – but that’s the beauty of it. Thank you, Lord, for marriage! It’s truly a gift.
