Is It Always Fun?

Several friends over the years have confided in us that they believe we have a wonderful marriage and they want to shape their relationships after us. Each time, we have greeted these compliments with laughter.

We just celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary. Has it all been bliss, at the time, I would say no, but looking back, yes.  How have we done it?

Several years back, after my son was born, I learned my wife had been keeping secrets from me on how we were doing financially. I discovered over 40K in credit card debt. I did not realize our debt was so bad. We had become distant, bitter and more secretive. I contributed to this debt, and to the growing lack of communication. Combine this with a baby in the house and all the trauma this brings to any sense of order your life once had. We were in chaos. I held my secrets too. I did not love my wife anymore. She was not fulfilling my needs or expectations. I let my eyes and mind wander. I was no longer faithful in my heart. I would sneek off, or grab opportunities to explore, and kept my time secret from my wife, only to feel even more alone. We both helped to erode our relationship.  

We would argue, bring up things from the past, bad things, and not let them remain there. We screamed, threw things, slammed doors, said mean and hateful things. We took opportunities to separate ourselves from eachother even when on vacation. But publicly, we were perfect with eachother. We were a model family.

Finally, we both had enough. We had been through counseling, and listened to that some, but not enough. We decided we needed to set a date for a huge change to occur. Our plan was that on this date, one month from that time, we will create our own Easter, our own day of new beginings, our day where our past sins can die and be forgiven. We would allow eachother to say to eachother "Easter" when we bring up something with malace before that date.

"Easter" allowed us to start over. We set aside "date nights" because we realized how much fun we had when we dated before we were married. So we began dating eachother again. We sat down to dinner together, and helped eachother in both prep and clean up. And if we got out of line by bringing up the old, Easter was called. It was difficult to let those past transgressions rest, because we held on to them so closely for so long, they were what we knew. We needed to know eachother, and not eachothers faults.

Has it been easy? No. But neither of us want to train a new person, and have found we are more in love with eachother today than the day we married. We are debt free, and we love eachother. We still digress, we still forget, and we still need to call Easter, not on our old stuff, but things we have created since that fateful day. It is a dance, one which we keep practicing.

I know Easter is the most important holiday to Christians. We have also allowed God back into our lives. We have been lead by His example, and understand we are faulty. We survive thanks to God.

So, close friends are surprised to learn we almost divorced, and remained "perfect" in the view of others,  even when we were going thru such difficulty. And that our marriage is stronger today than it ever has been. We will face more difficulty, no doubt. But now we have eachother.