Chad and I are twenty-eight-year-olds who’ve been married for four years, but we’ve been together way longer. We met when we were twelve; we sat across from each other at the table in art class. We’ve been together basically ever since. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of laughs, tears, and times we wanted to give up. We’re still together though, and still happy. We’ve learned that our society’s idea that monogamy isn’t possible and marriages aren’t forever just isn’t true. Marriage is hard, it’s frustrating, but it can last. In this new segment, I’ll share some real-life tips about what we’ve learned along the way.
Gift Giving Every woman, on some level, craves the grand gift-giving gesture. You know, the one from the movies where the sinewy protagonist blindfolds his significant other and leads her into a room filled with billions of roses and a gorgeous, one carat diamond ring. Or there’s the lavish surprise vacation to Hawaii for two weeks filled with romance. Maybe it’s an outrageous dress to wear to a lavish, reservation only dinner. Maybe it’s a brand new Corvette. Maybe it’s that hot pink diamond ring in the Litman’s jewelers case with a $5,000 price tag (no hints here, or anything, Chad). But let’s face it: for many of us, these lavish gifts are simply daydreams and may stay there forever. Few of us live lives of the movies…and, if we’re being real, few of us would want to. Does the ring big enough to make your hand hurt necessarily equate to a real emotional connection? It could… but then again, a huge price tag does not necessarily symbolize a huge amount of love. It’s sparkly, it’s gorgeous, it’s envy-worthy… but it doesn’t solidify your relationship, as too many women have come to learn the hard way. For many of us, reality can bite when it comes to gift giving. The struggles of paying the mortgage and the outrageous phone bill coupled with life’s lovely surprises (as in our water heater blowing up a month after we spent our savings on the house) can sway even the most romantic couple to a dollar-store level exchange. The corvette gets traded for a waxy piece of chocolate. The one carat ring becomes a one dollar carnation. The lavish vacation becomes a trip to McDonalds. But you know what I’ve learned? In all seriousness, it doesn’t matter. Give me McDonald’s cheeseburgers over caviar and champagne any day… because true, the cheese might be a bit strange and the burger a bit questionable. But I’ll still have an awesome time. I’ll still laugh my butt off with the crazy, goofy man I’m married to. Over the years, Chad and I have struggled with finances like any couple just starting out. We’ve been blessed, but we’ve had the years where we bought each other ten dollars in stuff from Dollar General for Valentine’s Day instead of splurging. We’ve had our years of waxy chocolates for Valentine’s Day and dinners at home. We’ve had our Christmas exchanges where things are far from equal. Flashback to our high school days when Chad was working part-time for minimum wage, and there were plenty of Valentine’s Days and holidays on the cheap. Wildflower bouquets, dinner cooked at home, and homemade gifts became our staples. But guess what? I still have the wooden heart he carved for me in eighth grade (complete with a mistake on the backside of it , which just makes it more precious). I still remember the day he stopped on his way to school to pick a bunch of random “wildflowers” which were probably just weeds because he couldn’t afford roses. I still have every note he wrote me, every dollar store card. That’s not to say we’ve never gone overboard on gift giving. Have we splurged on gifts over the years? You bet. There was the time in eighth grade he saved his allowance for months to buy me a locket for Christmas. There was a promise ring in tenth grade that set him back a few. There was the Playstation and DDR game he bought me one year for Easter (Don’t judge :) ). There was the Nicholas Sparks signed novel he bought me last year for Christmas. There was the Wii and the gaming chair I bought him. There was the expensive toolbox, countless video games, and trips to Medieval Times. We’ve both splurged. Maybe not Corvette level, Hawaii level splurges, but, in the scheme of our middle-class budget, they were splurges. . Were they special moments? Yes. But would I trade all of those splurges for some of our free and cheap moments? You bet. Last Valentine’s Day, we didn’t even exchange gifts. We spent the evening splitting a $10 Stromboli and a bottle of the cheapest vodka. We watched Netflix, laughed at stupid inside jokes, and just spent time together. And it was the best Valentine’s Day we’ve had to date. So there will be years in your marriage when you don’t have the money to buy or get gifts. There will be disappointing holidays where you feel like he’s forgotten you or doesn’t care about your relationship. Please remember, though, that gifts are not measures of your relationship. We’re all guilty of Facebook bragging… I myself put a picture of the roses Chad got me on FB for Valentine’s Day last week. But don’t feel like you have to compete with your friends. At the end of the day, gifts, no matter the holiday, are just nice gestures. They are not predictors of the success of a relationship. They are not requirements. Giftless holidays sometimes allow you to understand what you have when you take all of the extra stuff away. If you have a giftless holiday but can still enjoy the company you’re with, then you’ve achieved the greatest gift of all. Lindsay Detwiler Voice of Innocence, Without You, and Then Comes Love
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The vision:My perfectly white dress cascades behind me as I walk, flower bouquet bulging in my arms, down the lace-enshrouded aisle. After some elegant words and lofty I dos, we head to the reception, a perfect balance of elegance and fun. The cake is illustrious, the food delicious, and the DJ gets everyone on the floor. We party the night away, walking out under the stars, floating on a cloud. The reality:While the dress is truly beautiful, the straps start to come off, and my mother-in-law has to quickly stitch them after the ceremony to prevent a crazy malfunction. The bustle is incorrect, so we have to hastily do a makeshift, curtainy bustle. I almost put the ring on Chad's right hand instead of the left, and we are confused when it is time for us to kiss since there is no "you may kiss the bride." The sandcastle cake I requested looks more like sea slime and sort of tastes like it. We have no clue how to cut the cake and end up awkwardly making a disastrous mess of it. The DJ blows a fuse, leaving us standing for ten minutes in uncomfortable silence, and he picks the longest version of every song, leaving the traditional dances lasting way longer than expected. The photographer is awful...there are actually no pictures of just us that are clear. Our wedding in October of 2011 was far from the perfect vision we had in mind. There were plenty of things that went wrong and that were disappointing. It's the same for our marriage. This October will mark five years since our wedding day, and I'd like to say life is like a bouquet of roses. But it's not. The wedding flowers wilt quickly, and sometimes the gold band you bought starts to tarnish. Marriage is hard work. The romantic dinners and roses and strolls in the park hand in hand are sometimes just a thing of the movies. Real life--grocery shopping, work, cleaning, house disasters--can be exhausting. Spending almost every moment with someone can be agitating. Do we have beautiful romantic moments? Absolutely. We go to nice dinners. Chad surprises me with chocolate instead of roses (which is exactly what I would prefer). We laugh at life's crazy moments, and we often have a perfect night getting takeout and watching Netflix. We have a good life. But are things perfect? Hell no. We have screaming fights about his snoring or spilled soda on the floor or whose turn it is to let Henry out. We argue about where our furniture should go or when I last did laundry or who left food out on the counter to spoil. We scream about where the stamps are or where the savings account book is or where my favorite shoes got to. We accuse each other of eating the last Kit-Kat or misplacing the Xbox controller or Henry's vet papers. Like our wedding day, things aren't always the dreamy vision we had in mind. There are plenty of disappointments. But over the years, I've learned one big thing. Love is never perfect. It's frustrating and messy, just like a wedding. Sometimes the cake you bought tastes awful. Sometimes your gorgeous dress almost loses its straps. Sometimes the man you married snores way too much or refuses to put his laundry away or puts empty boxes back in the pantry. Sometimes the woman you married stuffs the trashcan full so she doesn't have to take it out or leaves coffee cups everywhere or leaves cereal in the sink (hypothetically speaking, of course. This is CLEARLY not about me :) ). But real love, the kind worth hanging onto for a lifetime, doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, if you can choose to stand beside someone who sometimes drives you crazy, if you can look past the ugly moments and focus on the beautiful ones, then you know you actually found love. Fall in LoveSome people fall in love at a coffee shop, their eyes meeting and instantaneously telling them that they have found their match. Others meet while passing each other on the street or at the library. Love reveals itself at the mall, at work, in the produce aisle of a grocery store. It can come all at once, or it can languidly reveal itself between mutual friends. Love can transpire between two acquaintances thrown together by mutual friends or a dating website. It can come when we are young, when we are old, or anytime in between. It can come once, it can come twice, it can come more times than we can count. Love’s story is unique to each of us, despite the common core of its emotions. No two love stories are the same, despite what movies and literature may try to tell us. For me, love revealed itself at the art table when I was twelve. True to love’s qualities, my love story is its own. Love at the Art TableIt was the first day of seventh grade, and my Cocoa Puffs were threatening to spew onto the floor from nerves. New students, new teachers, and new classes had upended my sense of calm that was usually shaky at best. Tapping my new shoes together and wishing I could fly back home, I waited for my name to be called for my seat in art class. Once in my chair, my brown eyes glanced around the room at the other faces, finding few that I recognized. That’s when I saw him. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid who would become my best friend, my first boyfriend, my fiancé, and eventually my husband. As fate would have it, he was seated across from me at the art table. It wasn’t love at first sight. There weren’t angelic rays flooding onto us like a spotlight. No cheesy love song blasted from the speakers. Nonetheless, when I saw him, my twelve-year-old self knew that there was something about him. He wasn’t dressed like a model from the pages of my Seventeen magazine. He wasn’t flaunting himself or even saying a word. There was just something about him that I was drawn to, something that told him he would be important to me. That gut feeling was one hundred percent accurate, as I would soon find out. From the beginning, Chad and I were the least likely couple you could imagine. I was Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, always saying “please” and burying my nose in a book. I was studious, serious, and rational to the core. He was free spirited, racking up detention halls as I racked up As. He cursed often, he hated school, and he hated rules. We had nothing in common other than the fact that we both played trumpet in the band and laughed at the same jokes. Over the years, however, we found something in each other. At first, it was friendship fused by a common sense of humor and the time spent together at the art table. There was something between us, a light that ignited when we were with each other. There was an ease to our conversations, even at the young age of twelve. We brought something out in each other. He made my rigid personality lighten up, and I helped bring some seriousness and goal setting to his carefree nature. As the years passed, we continued to grow together as we grew up. Laughter turned into kisses, dates turned into proms, and “I love yous” eventually turned into an engagement ring. We maneuvered the murky waters of adolescence together, finding that the connection merged would weather us through early adulthood as well. Many were skeptical about our relationship. Who finds their soulmate at twelve? However, we seemed to prove the naysayers wrong as we glided through our maturing relationship, always together. Certainly there were struggles. There were immature fights over jealousy and the other nonsensical ramblings of teenagers. There were angry words and tears, broken promises and slamming doors. We fought, we thought about breaking up. We wondered if we should move on and find someone new. No matter what feelings or thoughts threatened to tear us apart, though, our love always conquered them. No matter what we faced, we always found that we faced it better together. We realized that together was our only desired option. Now, at twenty-seven, people are amazed by our story. When we tell them that we have been each other’s “one and only” since we were twelve, we face skepticism and astonishment. In an age where you should try to “play the field,” we are an archaic trend from the past. When we got married, we had already been together for over a decade. At our wedding, our first dance was to Faith Hill’s “Just Breathe,” the song that we first danced to in junior high. Imperfect LovePeople assume that to be with one person since junior high, you must have an unbelievably perfect connection. This is far from the truth. Is our relationship roses and candles, smiles and stolen kisses? Are we living in a fantasy fairytale that is unattainable for others? The answer is a big fat no. Those who know us well know that we are not the ideal couple. We fight, and we fight often. Although our opposing personalities often help us balance each other out, they can also lead to turmoil. I am a planner, while he is free spirited. I am a saver, while he is a spender. I am meek and self-conscious at times, while he isn’t afraid to stand up for himself when he feels cheated. I worry about social appearances, while he isn’t afraid to curse in public. Our differences often lead to differences of opinion. Like any other couple, we have been tempted to throw in the towel from time to time. We push each other away, we frustrate each other, we annoy each other. Somehow, though, we always find a way to bridge the gap between us, no matter how wide it gets. For all of the bad days we’ve had, there seem to be at least twenty good ones. Additionally, we are not perfect adults, nor do we have the picture perfect life. We eat ice cream for dinner and buy way too much candy at the grocery store. We struggle to save money, splurging on impulsive buys. We don’t have a white picket fence in front of our house; in fact, our house is covered in the decaying leaves that I have been nagging him to clean up. I am a terrible cook, and he is a terrible handyman. Our only children have four legs. We are still working out the details and rules of this thing called adulthood. Through it all, though, we’ve learned one thing together: love isn’t perfect. The idea that it is perfect stems from a meticulously constructed illusion that fairytales do exist in real life, that the show Once Upon a Time can actually happen. In our world, however, Prince Charming doesn’t exist, but neither does Snow White. Instead, we must realize that love is about sacrifice, about reality. It’s about finding joy in the small things together. It’s about ignoring his annoying chewing habits and him forgiving me for spending way too much on makeup. It’s about just finding something to smile about each day. It’s about deciding that our faults deserve forgiveness because at the end of the day, we’d rather fight through our struggles than throw in the towel. It’s about deciding that our history together is worthy more than giving up or trying to find something new. It’s about choosing to believe in the power of us and our story over the pull of temptation. It’s about realizing that our life together isn’t even close to being perfect, but it makes us perfectly content overall. Monogamy is PossibleSo no, our story isn’t all that special. We are not romantic heroes who deserve a medal for staying together so long in a fickle society. We are not blinded by an unattainable love, we are not the model marriage. We don’t have this whole thing called love or life figured out. We’re still changing, we’re still growing, and we’re still searching for ourselves.
We are, however, proof that against all odds, against the statistics and stereotypes, our generation can stay true. Despite our “short attention spans” blamed on technology and our tendency to stray, our generation can stay in a monogamous, meaningful, fulfilling relationship. We do still believe in the power of love and the possibility of experiencing life with the right person. Chad and I are not supermodels or movie stars. We are not relationship experts. We are, however, two people who found each other at a young age and invested in each other. We are two average twenty-somethings who value love, our relationship, and the life we have built together. Above all, though, we are just a boy and a girl who fell in love at the art table in seventh grade. |
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