marriage: the first six months
June 30, 2004
I get asked the same questions quite often, by parties on this side and the other side of the Atlantic, on the phone, by email, and in person. Now the rest of you curious folks are in luck. Save your breath, your bandwidth, and your long-distance phone bill! Here are answers to all your burning questions, consolidated into one handy faux-interview.
So, how’s married life?
Fine, thanks.
Is it different? [I.e., different than before, when you were “just” living together?]
For us, being married is a lot like living together, and living together was good practice for being married. It’s not for everyone, but I’m really glad we did it.
When I moved out of the house on Brown Street and into the Rockledge apartment with E. -- August, 2001 -- many friends of mine were living with a partner, or about to move in together, or had lived together before getting married. A few friends who had lived with someone told me they would not move in with someone again until they were married. After a few days I began to understand their point of view. After a few months, I agreed. Living together was the hardest work I had ever done in my life; I wouldn’t go through all that if I wasn’t certain it would last.
Considering all the changes that happened in the past year, I’m especially glad we didn’t wait until we were married to move in together. What if we had kept separate residences until suddenly, in December 2003, I quit my job and we got married and moved to Mali and started living together? What’s more, we would have been separated for the three months prior to the wedding, since E. had to leave in September, with or without me. Just typing that makes my palms clammy with anxiety.
If I had come to Bamako already married -- bound by my own promise, spoken in front of my closest family and friends and certified by the District of Columbia, to stay with my husband no matter what -- well, I might been a wee bit resentful. As it happened, having spent two months in Mali before we got married, I knew full well what I was getting into. I chose to stay here with my husband, for better or for worse.
So, yes, it’s a lot like living together, but there is something different.
What’s different?
It’s hard to say. Here’s one thing: Where before I was 99% certain that we were sticking together through hell and high water, I am now 100% certain. With that extra 1% of security, I worry less about small disagreements. I think of the big picture more often. I think ahead further, ten or twenty or thirty years, and wonder what our lives will be like then.
Right now they are pretty simple: We both work (some of us more than others). We come home in the evening and eat together, watch a movie or just read books. Sometimes we play cribbage or backgammon, but not lately. (E. doesn’t like to lose.) Sundays he makes us pancakes.
Recently I’ve noticed something: When I am home first, I get impatient for E. to come home too. Maybe I have a list of little details about my day that I am waiting to share with him, or a burning question that I know he’ll have the answer to. Or maybe it’s just that the house feels so empty when he’s not there.
I used to get annoyed when he worked late. Now I make it a point to enjoy that impatient feeling. I want to remember it. I don’t think I’ll always feel it. Maybe we’ll be too busy, maybe we’ll get too used to each other. Maybe someday we’ll need to be reminded not to take each other for granted. Then I hope I come back and read this and remember.
So, are you guys going to have kids right away?
No.
That’s good, it’s nice to have the first year just to yourselves.
So I hear.
So … How’s Africa?
Hot.
This is really nice. You and Eric are very lucky to have found each other. (I was going to say, "Eric is very lucky to have found you", which is true, but is most likely only half of the story. I just don't really know him at all yet.)
And, by the way, when or if you do have a kid, people tend to ask you immediately when you're having the next one. Be prepared.
That part about the impatient feeling? And remembering it?
THAT is the stuff that love is made of. (And books. And poems. Your life is BRIMMING with literary influence! Woooo!)
Well said, Robin. For me, almost four years later, that impatient feeling has never left!
As for kids, Amy makes a good point about being asked about when the next is coming. Even when you're done, you just get asked if you'll ever have any more. (In between the times that you ask yourself.)
I agree that living together is great practice for being married. How else do you find out all those crazy little things about your future spouse? There is certainly plenty of discovery left for after the wedding.
I am not sure I believe the living together thing really adds to the marriage. I found(after time) that all those crazy things you learn by living together are either do-able, compromis-able or ignor-able. When you say 'I do' and things happen... it doesn't matter how long you have dated or lived together. By now your thoughts have switched to "I have to deal with ______ for the REST of my life."
After all the comments and thoughts, including my own, I belive it depends on your mind set(and past) going in to the different aspects and levels of the relationship.
The kids thing is different as well, all depending on the need of therapy level of the family you married into. In your case Robin, very high! We were married 5 years before having a baby. No one ever asked. His family still hadn't recovered or gotten used to ME. When I finally did get pregnant my own mother's(and Eric's) comment, after having to work myself up to tell her, was "Great, 2 friends are dying and now your pregnant, who am I going to travel with now?"
In the end, I am not sure whether I believe pigeon holing the different levels is wrong or just my weird ass family.
Yeah Robin the one you married into!
Nicely done. This makes me want to write my own bit about what's different about married life as I approach the one year mark this September.
Hey, did you ever post the compilation of thoughts on marriage that you used at your wedding? I'd like to see that in writing.
Semicolons go outside of quotes? Shit! My whole life has been a lie! Hey, I can't believe we never talked punctuation when you were in the States. I feel like a kid who went to Disney World and didn't ride Space Mountain. Though literally I did go to Disney World when I was 7, and I did ride Space Mountain, twice, and it was freakin awesome. But that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, I love your blog and I wish I had the chops to make one this slick and photography-filled. I'm also envious of the All-Soccer-All-The-Time channel, but at least I have Unavision, which is one part Soccer, one part Tiny People Boxing, and two parts Women in Bikinis Hosting Talk Shows and Game Shows.
Does this comment have a point? I guess not. Hope to see you again someday, American Robina!
"Maybe someday we’ll need to be reminded not to take each other for granted..." I have to say this can be difficult to remember at times. Make sure you recognize this when it happens and make a point to change the course. :-) Robin, I am so happy you found someone that you connect with on so many levels. Being someone who was lucky enough to meet the challenge of living in sin for six years now... I can appreciate the little things you go through. To someone I still consider a long lost, distant friend, good luck and may the road always rise to meet you.
P.S. Nice site! I am now a certified computer geek with artistic undertones...are you creating sites for companies in the States?
