Reflections on Year One

Steve and I are coming up on 5yrs of marriage in a week, so I thought maybe I'd write some insightful and inspiring things about our time together thus far. LOL Just kidding, kind of. I thought it might be a good idea to share different thoughts that we've had about each year so far, if only for my own entertainment and record keeping purposes, since most everything I write in my actual journal has much more to do with raising kids than my musings on marriage.

Year One

• I asked Steve what word he would use to describe year one, he said SELFISH. I fully agree. We were super selfish not only in the choices we made together (stupid stupid truck buying) but also individually. We had super high expectations of each other that we didn't really communicate about in a mature or super loving way. We were always butting heads on every minor detail of every minor and major thing. Neither one of us was too keen to give in very quickly and it made for some stress, but we have since figured out how to be a lot less selfish and communicate better.
• I think I might use the word LONELY to describe year one. That's depressing. Sorry, it just was. We were both working and he was playing lots of volleyball, to I think avoid my particular brand of crazy, and sometimes it felt like we were just roommates. It was also lonely in the sense that I'm a pretty straight shooter when it comes to talking about issues when they arise, and Steve, not so much. So a lot of the time things were left really open-ended and it was lonely having nobody to talk to about it.  I felt disconnected from him and from the people around me and from myself- scary lonely place. Now we talk lots about lots, I don't mind waiting a bit for Steve to gather his own thoughts about something and he doesn't mind letting me just have my moment when an issue arises. I also have figured out how to talk to other people about stuff without revealing every detail of what's going on with Steve and I. I really wouldn't want people talking about the details, and I try not to get too caught up in other people's details if I can avoid it.
• We agree that the term COMPROMISE is also appropriate. There was a lot of that happening that year, and we learned a lot from having to lower some expectations and work together to figure out what was going to work best for our relationship. Compromise in our marriage though, only works when we're both on board 100%, so it's still a constant process, but far less painful now than year one.
• EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER could also describe year one. There were super happy moments and super unhappy ones. There was the mix of work/school/home life stresses that just complicated all the major stuff that was going on and it was not the smoothest ride that year.
• Probably the best part of  year one was finding out we were adding to the family. We gained some much needed perspective when we found out Kalea would be joining us, and we started working on a lot of things right away so she wouldn't find herself in the middle of a huge mess when she arrived. That was a huge blessing. I was also super sick for the first 20wks of that pregnancy, which meant I had a lot less energy to argue anything, so Steve was able to have a bit of a break from "the crazy" and he took really great care of poor sick pregnant me. Then he had his tonsils removed and we both were super sick and had to take care of each other a bit more and we bonded. Once we started to be a little more SELF-LESS we started to like each other a lot more again. Haha, lesson learned. No amount of praying together or reading scriptures helped our cause, it was the actual "doing of the word" and serving each other that saved us that year and has kept us on a pretty even keel ever since.

When people say "The first year is the hardest", they're right. It really was. But ultimately it was the most important for us because we learned a lot of those foundational things that we've heard you need to make the subsequent years successful. The list above is fairly short, we learned a whole bunch, but in the interest of not getting too personal or over-sharing, you get the short list. I never understood what people meant when they talked about "marriage is work", I was all caught up in the "put on a happy face" facade of what marriage looked like. I get the work part now, it's constant, it doesn't stop and it probably never will. Thank goodness. Happy bubbles are great, but I like things to be a little messy, and my marriage is a little messy. I like it and looking back on year one now, I'm a lot more grateful for it than I ever thought I would be. Thanks year one, you didn't totally suck after all!