This Is Marriage: Day 556

Confession: While marriage is one of the best things I've experienced, it's also one of the most challenging. It takes a lot of work. Mostly on yourself. Because in marriage, as in life, you will at times suffer disappointments, hurt feelings and conflicts. You will at times be the cause of disappointments, hurt feelings and conflicts (hopefully unintentionally - intentionally causing hurt feelings is not a good way to human). Sometimes you will fail. Sometimes you will make mistakes. Sometimes you will handle these failures and mistakes well, sometimes you will handle them poorly. Sometimes you will wonder who this person even is that you married and conclude that he must have been raised by wolves. Sometimes you will wonder who you even are and why someone would have willingly vowed to spend all the years with you. But you will find a way through all the feelings and conflicts. You will venture into some intense, introspective shit. You will struggle and you will become better for it. And that will make all the difference.

Marriage is awesome. And it's hard. Maybe it's awesome because it's hard, because it pushes you through difficult conversations and uncomfortable feelings towards a better, more gracious and understanding self. It's a perpetual process of trying to be a better life partner today than you were yesterday. Admittedly, this does not come naturally to me. On occasion I have thought it would be easier to live with a house full of bears than with Pete. I assume he has on occasion thought it would be easier to live with a house full of beers than with me. On so many occasions I have thought about filling our house with pet bears. So yeah, I'm not a wellspring of effortless and eternal compassion. But I will keep trying. Because if there's anything worth putting my time and effort into, it's my relationships and figuring out how to be a better person in the world. So I will remind myself that there's no right vs. wrong, there's just us and figuring out how to make life more awesome. That we're imperfect, our marriage is imperfect and that's ok. That it is not in fact a personal affront if someone ate all the peanut butter cups while I was sleeping. I will strive always to be excellent to all and party on.

Lyric of the moment: "Saw the waves but not the tide. I couldn't stay, I don't know why. A sailor married to the sea. My luck is a lost key..." ~Metric "Waves"