Check out my fellow Marine wife, Lindsey Irene's blog post on
Thanks for the shout-out girl!
On her blog is a link to a HuffPost Weddings article that really caught my attention and unlike some of the fluffy, rhetoric-filled articles you get on marital bliss- this was raw.
It talked a lot about reality versus fairy tales when it comes to maintaining and keeping your marriage and the author, Sheryl Paul, uses Jennifer Lopez as a key example.
With celebrities, they can be married for 15 minutes and realize that it's not going to work out.
Try telling that to a military spouse as their significant other is deployed.
Having done my first deployment as a spouse versus being a Navy Brat, was quite the experience.
It was just about as much fun as I never want to have again
(and by fun, I mean filled with tears and worry).
Loving someone is easy but maintaining a marriage is supposed to be difficult.
Nothing worth having in life is ever easy,
what would make you think that marriage would be any different?
My spouse and I spent a little over two months of our first year of marriage together.
The majority of that year, I spent in Wisconsin, while he was in California/deployed to Afghanistan.
Communication became a major factor.
I'm sure you can assume that tensions would build once we were together again.
These are two young people who are crazy about each other, married, sharing the same financial accounts and let's mix in some military complications.
There are long hours, unexpected training trips, uncertainty of where you're going next (that one's for me actually) and large amounts of time where
you're not even physically within spitting distance of each other.
To say that I pictured my life differently would be an exaggeration.
That's the truth.
Right now, I'm a stay-at-home wife and it is not for me.
I do not like staying at home all day.
I love working.
I love challenges and being incredibly busy.
I love social media, e-mails, phone calls, communicating with other people.
Staying at home has been a challenge in itself for me.
Let's add my husband's 12+ hour/day schedule and that's your intro to the military for ya.
At 22-years old, I pictured myself conquering the world by now.
still working on that...
But it's taught me a lot about life, in a completely different way than what college did for me.
Life is expensive
This is something I knew before, but it's really hitting home now.
You need a car(s), a home, appliances, and basic utilities.
That's without paying for home decor or tackling the check on date nights.
if you can afford date nights
Throw in some student loans to jazz it up a bit and you've got a young, married couple.
I would find myself envying the writers of other blogs and their never ending closets filled with beautiful clothes, DSLR cameras that captured their date nights and home parties...
above all else it seemed like they were living the dream
But my life is the reality of marriage.
It isn't always easy or fun but that's why you have to do it with your soulmate.
He or she is someone who is imperfect but is perfect for you.
It is someone who looks past your flaws and embraces you in the moments when you are struggling.
Privileges come and go, so does money.
Conversations like this need to be more open.
It's not airing your dirty laundry, it's what marriage is actually like.
It more than the perfect pictures posted on Pinterest
or that epic DIY wedding.
You have each other.
You will argue, fight and go to bed angry
but it happens and it's up to you to
forgive each other
and
realize that life is imperfect
but nevertheless beautiful.
xoxo,
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