My darling husband woke up on the wrong side of town. Complaining about every single thing. I woke up on the ME side of bed and I am in no mood to take this behavior. Thank you for inspiring this DIG. Marriage is a school. Not a destination. Not an achievement. Not a wedding day. Not a ring. Not a title. A SCHOOL. And every person who has remained married long enough eventually graduates from certainty into humility.
I smile whenever newlyweds ask ME for marital advice. I certainly don’t know everything. But because the longer I have been married, the more I have discovered how little I know. Fifteen years into this journey, I no longer believe successful marriages are built by people who got everything right. I think they are built by people who kept learning. Because marriage has a way of introducing you to yourself. Not the version that exists in your imagination. The real version. The one hidden beneath the makeup.
Beneath the confidence. Beneath the degrees. Beneath the promotions. Beneath the carefully constructed image. Marriage meets the person behind the person. And then refuses to leave. It discovers your fears. Your insecurities. Your childhood wounds. Your need for control. Your stubbornness. Your selfishness. Your pride. And then it places another imperfect human being directly beside all of it. Every day. For years. If that is not a classroom, I do not know what is. Nobody really prepares us for that. Nobody tells us that the greatest arguments are often not about money. Or children. Or in-laws. Or careers. Those are merely the symptoms.
The real battles are usually between expectations and reality. Between who we thought our spouse would be and who they actually are. Between who we imagined ourselves to be and who marriage reveals us to be. Somewhere between the vows and the years, reality arrives. And reality is rarely polite. Reality tells you that your spouse cannot read minds. Reality tells you that love does not automatically create understanding. Reality tells you that attraction alone cannot sustain commitment. Reality tells you that good intentions are not the same thing as good habits. Reality tells you that communication is not something couples master. It is something couples practice.
Over. And over. And over again. I have come to believe that the beginning matters more than most people realize. Because every marriage develops a constitution. Written or unwritten. The terms of engagement. How do we fight? How do we forgive? How do we spend? How do we make decisions? How do we handle disappointment? How do we protect each other? What happens when one of us is weak? What happens when both of us are weak? What is sacred here? What is non-negotiable?
Most people spend months planning a wedding. The flowers. The colors. The guest list. The menu. The photographs. Yet some spend less time discussing the principles that will govern the next fifty years. The wedding lasts a day. The marriage must survive decades. And decades are long. Long enough for dreams to change. Long enough for bodies to change. Long enough for finances to rise and fall. Long enough for children to arrive and leave. Long enough for parents to die. Long enough for disappointments to accumulate. Long enough for life to test every promise that was once made in perfect weather. That is why I no longer admire marriages because they look happy.
I admire marriages that survive truth. The truth that neither partner is perfect. The truth that feelings are seasonal. The truth that attraction evolves. The truth that forgiveness is expensive. The truth that some days love feels less like a feeling and more like a discipline. A decision. An act of obedience. A commitment to the covenant you made when the emotions of the moment have gone quiet. The older I get, the more I realize that obedience is one of God’s most misunderstood gifts. The world teaches us to follow our feelings. God teaches us to honor our commitments.
The world celebrates self-expression. God often invites self-sacrifice. The world asks, “Are you still happy?” God asks, “Are you still faithful?” And there is a difference. A profound difference. Because happiness comes and goes. Faithfulness remains. Perhaps that is why the marriages that move me most are not the glamorous ones. They are the old ones. The couples who have lived long enough to become witnesses to each other’s entire lives. The husband who remembers the young woman she used to be. The wife who remembers the frightened young man he once was. The dreams. The failures. The victories. The losses. The seasons nobody else saw. The tears nobody else witnessed.
The sacrifices nobody applauded. The battles nobody documented. Yet somehow they stayed. Long enough to become history for one another. Long enough to become home. Long enough to finish the sentence they started decades earlier. And perhaps that is the real blessing of marriage. Not perfection. Not uninterrupted happiness. Not a life free of conflict.
But the extraordinary privilege of being fully known by another imperfect human being… And still being chosen. Again. And again. And again. Until one day, old age arrives quietly at your door. The children have grown. The noise has faded. The ambitions have softened. The mirrors tell a different story. And there, sitting across from you, is the person who witnessed it all. The entire journey. The becoming. The breaking. The healing. The learning. The loving. The life. And in that moment, after all the years, all the lessons, all the storms and all the seasons… You finally understand.
The greatest achievement of marriage was never finding the right person. It was becoming the kind of people who stayed. Happy Fathers Day to all the amazing Dads on earth. You don’t get enough thank you for taking it all on…..take your flowers…
Yours honestly DIG
