Please welcome Lia of Shanti Town...
This guest blogging assignment comes at an opportune time. Because as Shannon comes into the home stretch of the days leading up to her own wedding, I am getting ready to celebrate the first anniversary of mine.
Some background. My husband (tee hee) and I have been together for nearly eight years. We met on a stairway in a building in Brooklyn where we later ended up living and building a home together, and where even later, he proposed to me. In the very spot, on the very dirty staircase, where we first met. I don't want to say that it was love at first sight... but it kinda was. Meeting him was the best thing that has ever happened to me, followed, at a very close second, by getting to marry him.
When you're zooming toward the wedding, most of your thoughts about marriage are confined to the very short term (the ceremony, the vows, the invite list), or the very long term (forever, forever, forever), but it's only AFTER the wedding that people start talking to you about the... (drum roll, please)... First Year of Marriage. The spectacular! The dreaded! The revealing! And so, as I near my one-year anniversary of wedded-ness, I would like to present here, my findings on this mysterious annum:
The First Year of Marriage, a Comprehensive Guide.
1. You're going to start it exhausted. Whether you had a million hands on deck for your wedding, or it was a DIY extravaganza, you are going to be wiped out afterwards. If you were smart enough to build in a nice week-long nap before your honeymoon, or at least to plan it in a bed on a beach somewhere, you will recover quickly. If you, ahem, decided to fly to Iceland two days after the nuptials for an adventure honeymoon, you maaaaaaay spend the first three days wandering around, freezing, wondering why you didn't just go to Mexico like everyoone said you should, dazed from the enormity of what's just happened to you, and by the smell of beer that permeates the streets of Reykjavik first thing in the morning. You will survive this, and eventually get your sea legs back, but it will take you some time. So, know that.
2. A lot of things won't change. All the old wives' tales about the first year of marriage being the hardest year of marriage, were started during the age when couples didn't live together, or really even known one another, before getting married. If, like most, you have been happily living in sin for years before sealing the deal, there will not be a lot of logistical adjustments to make. My husband (then-fiance) and I would often talk about this, about the beauty of getting married to someone you know so well: there is just no room to try and fool yourself into thinking that "everything will be different" after the wedding. So, if you get home, wedded, and everything about your actual life feels pretty much the same. Don't fret. It's normal.
3. But some things will. It's subtle. It's hard to put your finger on, but something is different after you put those rings on one another's fingers. And maybe it's the ceremony, and maybe it's the pledge you take in front of all your family and friends, and maybe it's the work that went into putting it all together, and maybe it's just some invisible relief that now it really is clear that you two are committed to a life together (even though you thought that was pretty clear before you even decided to get married), but something changes. It's as if the relationship, the entity that is the relationship, and the two of you, take a collective sigh. The ground feels just a little firmer. Several unanswered questions get put away, permanently. And a whole host of things that used to bother you about the other person, get written off as not worth the upset in the face of "til death do us part".
4. The sex will get better. (Seriously. We are not one of those aberration couples who have just been doing it like bunnies for all of our eight years of life together. We are a normal couple with an average freequency of... you know what). The sex get better because you realize that if you don't tend to this very vital part of your life together, and start the pattern of tending to it right from the get go, it could easily get lost. It happens. To a lot of people. And there's something about the flush of new marriage that makes you very clear about what you're going to try and do right, and what you are going to try even harder not to do wrong. And not having sex, is one of those things.
5. Decisions will get easier. You will feel more at ease talking about and framing your life together, as you are now legitimately one's "husband" and the other's "wife", and so you might find yourself talking about goals and concrete plans for how to make your way to those goals, in ways you never have before. Your identity as "a team", is now fully accredited, and you begin to feel it. The path gets a little clearer. And it feels good.
6. You will realize exactly what you've signed up for. Even if you or your partner were, or are someone who has had dubious feelings about the institution of marriage, once you are a card-carrying member, you start to understand why everyone's so darn excited about it. You will find yourself reading books and essays and articles that speak about marriage, and you will understand, suddenly, that you have begun what could be the greatest adventure of your life. To devote your life to someone. To feel certain that you are going to be lying in bed next to this same person until you're both old enough to barely remember how you started - what could be more exciting? Require more of you? And reap for every ounce of your effort such immediate results? How come no one ever TOLD you this?! You will be very, very happy, sometimes on a daily basis, that you had the good sense to say "I do".
7. Oceans of love will find you swimming in them. You will feel, in moments, more in love with your husband or wife than you thought possible. That needs no further description. It just is. So, when it happens, dive in.
8. You will still be you. You are going to worry about the same shit, be juvenile about the same shit, have angst and fear and doubt about the same shit, and struggle over the same shit. Your career will not magically be better or worse than it was. Your hair will not be shinier. Your eyes will not be, necessarily, wiser. Your friends will still be your friends and your family will still be your family. This is a good thing. Becoming a married person does not, and should not, heal you of your wounds. All it will do, is provide a shore for you to swim back to when you find yourself lost at sea. Don't try and make the marriage the shore and the sea and the sky above... it's too much pressure, and things will break.
9. He (or she) will still be him (or her). He's still going to do all the things he did before. Say the same things in the same tone of voice. Wear the same clothes. Like the same foods. Not like the same foods. Want the same things and not want the same things. This should be a relief, not a problem. I have found, for myself, that post-marriage I have come to take great pride in the ways in which I can predict and compliment all my husband's many sides and moods. I am an expert on him. I am the most expert. This is my privileged place, as his wife... I am the knowingest knower of him, and my job is to make sure that I always, always am.
10. You will finally understand what's important. Possibly for the first time in your life, you will understand that your relationship to another person (now, your marriage), is something that must be fiercely protected. You will understand how far to let other people in. You will take real stock of what kind of marriage you want and you will do everything in your power to set the stage for that marriage. You will understand that some things, some people, and some dramas do not belong in your life anymore. You will become very clear about the fact that this is your family, your new and now primary family, and that it comes first. Everything else now comes a clear and distinct second. You will feel very lucky to have something in your life that is so important. And you are.
{Image via Style Sight}
