When marriage isn’t the fairytale you were expecting…

Take your mind back to the day when you first met. Maybe it happened suddenly or maybe your feelings evolved over time. Every relationship starts off beautiful. You see the exquisite details in each other. Some biological force draws you toward the way they do things differently. When you’re young and falling in love, the other person can do no wrong. 

Eventually, they expose their edges. You begin to surface to reality. The person you’ve fallen for isn’t perfect. They’re human. But that’s okay, because you see their flaws as an avenue for God’s grace. And secretly you’ve always wanted a rebel so you could live out the love story from A Walk to Remember (sans the ending). You know the deal – bad boy turned good. 

Yes love is beautiful, but that old cliche is repeated for a reason – love is blind – or at least love only sees what it wants to see. You’re experiencing the world through rose-coloured glasses. Falling in love is beautiful. But eventually – you wake up. 

When you get married, you start to bicker about the smallest things. He hates the way you hang the towels or fold his socks. You pester him for not making the bed. A myriad of tiny insignificant elements begin to accumulate and suddenly there is this wall between you. The rose-coloured window-panes are gone. You’ve woken up and this is your reality. Every. Day. 

Being married isn’t easy. My first year of marriage was incredibly difficult for me. It wasn’t aided by the fact that 3 days after our romantic honeymoon in Italy ended, my husband disappeared out field on a military exercise for 2 months. #militarylife – am I right? 

I remember going to Hens Parties and Bridal Showers and actually feeling sorry for my friends who were glowing with excitement. For me, it felt like my reality of finally living life with the one I loved hadn’t measured up to the anticipation I had been building for years. He worked shift work and some days between our full-time jobs, we hardly even saw each other. Like ships in the night, we were living our lives under the same roof but it didn’t feel like it used to. Was it wonderful to never have to say goodbye and drive to my home across town? Absolutely. But I thought life would have been more than it was. I’d grown up in a culture that had idolised marriage. And perhaps that is where the true problem lies. 

We need our husbands to make us feel beautiful with their words and with their actions. We need them to constantly affirm what we are doing and if at some point we disagree, something inside us rattles. We forget who we were on our own and become someone new, trying to be who they want us to be and forgetting the fact they fell in love with the person we were before we even met. 

We expect so much of them and it’s no wonder we are disappointed. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you – your husband is a human! But as our culture idolises marriage, we are unknowingly expecting our husbands to take to place of God in our lives. 

I’ve been married for almost half a decade now and I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know that you’ll ever see me position myself as an expert on marriage or offer any real advice. But I’ll try to be transparent and perhaps that will help someone else to hold on and not give up on the person you love. 

Some days they will be harder to love than others. And so will you. Some days you’ll feel frustrated and misunderstood. Some days you’ll find yourself just wanting to throw in the towel – after all, so many people do. But on those days, you need to focus on the good moments, their acts of service, the fun memories and the little ways they demonstrate their love for you throughout the day. Not every man is a big-romantic-gesture person. 

I heard this phrase last week to describe divorce as ‘uncoupling’. The truth is that divorce is all around us. I have friends that have been divorced. You may have been divorced yourself. The idea of divorce for me is like Eve in the garden. I’d be telling myself the grass was greener elsewhere. But the pattern is true no matter who you are. Fall blind and hard but once again you’ll wake up to the reality, none of us is perfect. Now I’m not speaking about those who are subject to domestic violence or abuse. I’m talking about the average Christian relationship – that was romanticised in your mind but seems less than Pinterest #couplegoals. You’re young and wish you were like John and Lisa Bevere only to forget they’ve got 40 years on us. I love how they laugh and say, ‘that’s 40 more years of mistakes we’ve had to learn from!’. 

I’ve been feeling a bit disheartened lately. There have been a few women in the personal growth sector that I’ve really looked up to that have diverged from where they started. I loved them because we shared similar values. They were Christian women with young kids who built incredible businesses helping others grow. And then their podcasts just got weird. They stopped talking about God and started referencing ‘The Universe’. They began to speak about ‘a higher power’, ‘manifesting’ and working with mediums. And not long after, announced that they were no longer with the husbands they’d been married to for years, who had been there and supported them in their business endeavours. 

Now, I don’t know their situation and it is not my place to judge. It just seems increasingly frequent for someone to achieve the ‘highest version of themselves’, they need to outgrow and leave their partner behind. 

This morning, I was feeling a bit grumpy. Mostly exhausted from moving to the other side of the country and having zero moments to stop and process everything for myself. I was listening to Spotify and it automatically started playing suggested songs. This one by Ben Platt ft. Sarah Bareilles came on and I wanted to share it with you. It made me think of those personal growth gurus. It reminded me that you can still grow into who God called you to be – even when your partner is less than perfect! Because the truth is – you’re less than perfect too. In fact, I know, I am pretty far from it. We both have growing to do. And he is probably doing the best he can. 

Have a listen to the song – it’s beautiful. I’m not sure where you are at in your own journey but I pray this simple song can encourage you in this season. There is always hope when you know Jesus. 

Much love, always,

Nicola

Grow As We Go: (By Ben Platt ft. Sarah Bareilles)

You say there’s so much you don’t know

You need to go and find yourself

You say you’d rather be alone

‘Cause you think you won’t find it tied to someone else

Ooh, who said it’s true

That the growing only happens on your own?

They don’t know me and you

I don’t think you have to leave

If to change is what you need

You can change right next to me

When you’re high, I’ll take the lows

You can ebb and I can flow

And we’ll take it slow

And grow as we go

Grow as we go

You won’t be the only one

I am unfinished, I’ve got so much left to learn

I don’t know how this river runs

But I’d like the company through every twist and turn

Ooh, who said it’s true

That the growing only happens on your own?

They don’t know me and you

You don’t ever have to leave

If to change is what you need

You can change right next to me

When you’re high, I’ll take the lows

You can ebb and I can flow

And we’ll take it slow

And grow as we go

Grow as we go

I don’t know who we’ll become

I can’t promise it’s not written in the stars

But I believe that when it’s done

We’re gonna see that it was better

That we grew up together