Love and Marriage

I love my wife and today, (like every single day, several times a day) I told her as much. She gave me a strange look. "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked her. She replied, "You'll be telling me how crazy I drive you before today is over". That is true. She does drive me crazy sometimes. As I'm sure I drive her crazy. I made a vow to take the good with the bad. The bitter with the sweet. And if even given the choice, I'd stay where I am. Both of those statements can be true...even at the same time.

I was  hanging out with a couple of friends of mine and one of them happens to be single. Through out this blog I'll refer to him as "My single friend" or a similar distinction. We just hung out and talked like we often do. We laugh and joke, reminisce about old times and vent about jobs and significant others. As we went through our typical routine, my single friend said, "I never hear anything good about marriage". I was actually disappointed. I feel like my outlook on marriage is pretty good. And I feel like I communicated the positives more often than the latter, but apparently I don't communicate well enough to encourage my single friend to consider getting married. I have some friends that are super negative when it comes to their outlook on marriage and I started to think, "Maybe my single friend is not discouraged by me, per se, and maybe it's those other guys". And maybe just a little because of me.

I try to be honest with everyone. Nothing is great all the time and I don't waste time lying to my friends trying to convince them that my life is perfect and I don't waste time telling acquaintances about any problems I may be having. Most acquaintances don't care if you're having a bad day or not so there's no need going into detail with them, and your friends don't deserved to be lied to (One of the problems that you run into is friends who want to know your dirt to make them feel better about themselves, but we'll get to that at a later time).

Many would say I got married late. But at the age of 27, many more people would say that I got married too soon. In my wife I have my best friend. And like any best friends, we laugh more than argue, we smile more than we frown, and we chit-chat more than we give each other the silent treatment.

Between all of the television shows and stand-up comedians, bad-mouthing marriage, it has become commonplace to joke about how much your wife or husband sucks. In a way, we could be shaping unmarried people's views in a negative manner (Along with the near 50% divorce rate). Fact: Marriage is work. There are definitely days where I question my decision to get married, but for every 1 day I question marriage, there are 25 days where I am so thankful that God blessed me with my wonderful wife and can't imagine not being with her. I guess I need to be more mindful and communicate those things more and focus less on making Al Bundy type of jokes.

This is dedicated to one of my newest friends who was just engaged recently.