Newlywed

Newlywed All Over Again: How I Fixed My Marriage

Posted by Monica O'Brien on September 29, 2008 at 10:04 pm.

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I haven’t written much this summer, but this is not a post to apologize for that. It’s a post to come clean about part of the reason I haven’t written.

The truth is I’ve been focusing on my marriage. Rebuilding it, in fact. Which seems a little ridiculous, considering I have been married less than two years and a marriage should not get broken that soon.

People are always shocked that I’m married when they meet me. Like jaw dropping, please excuse me while I pick my mouth up off the floor, shocked. After all, I’m 24 years old, I’m in graduate school, and I’m working at a start up. My husband is a full-time student in a four year professional optometrist program. And we’re both seemingly a little self-absorbed with our careers.

I spent an entire year focusing on everything else. For a year I neglected my marriage, thinking that I could “have it all” without putting much work into it.

And now, my generation is obsessed with talking about marriage. There is a lot of talk from single people about why they are not married, why they are waiting to get married, or why they don’t think there’s a point to marriage. There are also a lot of married people in Gen Y that are happily married, or happily engaged. And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them.

What annoys me is when people write about their lovey dovey marriages as if it’s all rainbows and sunshine. I don’t think I’m jealous – I just want to taste reality in those posts. Because let’s face it – marriage does not have much in common with a bag of Skittles.

But when something is as dear to your heart as your marriage, it takes a lot of courage to write about the bad days. This is why nobody my age writes about how hard it is to be young and married, and how it’s exceptionally difficult when both people want careers also.

I do write about it. All the time. And let me tell you, marriage is not about being in love. E and I have been in love since we first met. That stuff is easy. The hard part of marriage is in the details. Because marriage is really about taking your turn at washing dishes and making sure the mortgage gets paid on time. Pulling the shower curtain shut after a bath and not leaving wet clothes in the laundry machine for long periods. You get the picture.

That’s how we fixed our marriage. I started washing dishes. E started inviting me out to dinner more (after we were sure we could pay the mortgage). We stopped pretending that we were two individuals trying to make sense of our careers, who just so happened to be married to each other. We started to put each other first again. And now that we’ve had our first major trial in marriage, a little ahead of schedule, I feel like I could maybe never let our marriage fall apart like that again.

But you never know. Marriage is the decision that you will never know if you made correctly. Ever. That’s the other part no one talks about, because nobody wants to talk about how they sometimes wonder if they made a mistake on their marriage.

If you have advice about how to keep a marriage together, please don’t email me about it. You do not know what’s best for me, and in the end, this post is really not about solving my problems. It’s about telling another truth about marriage to my generation, because I know there are young married couples out there who do not feel lovey dovey anymore and cannot figure out why. Don’t give up. Things can get better if you pay attention to the little stuff.

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  • YManagingBoomers
    Well said. I am a very happy 26-year-old newlywed. When it comes to marriage, many of my friends fit into two categories: single and wishing they were married like me or married and wishing they were in a "perfect" marriage like me. Neither takes into consideration the (other) truth about marriage: It really isn't about love. It's about commitment. It's about promising to be partners, in every sense of the word, with a flawed person for the rest of your life. I didn't get married because I love my husband (although I do wholly). I got married because I wanted to show him, our families, our communities, and (because we're in a religious commitment, not just a secular one) God that I'm serious about our commitment to be together for the rest of our lives. And my marriage (although still young) is far from perfect. We fight often, but we always maintain a level of respect for each other and our commitment. We don't bring friends' and relatives' opinions in disputes and never ignore anger or pain. The truth is: no marriage is perfect. None can be. And the sooner we stop perpetuating the myth, the sooner marriages will begin to mend.
  • I got married at 24 also, had a child... and launched my first company. No question love is not enough, it is simply the foundation. Communication, understanding, flexability, etc. are the important components.

    Married now 12 years, and wouldn't trade it for the world.

    - Mike
  • My husband and I are in the camp that love is a choice. Teenagers fall in and out of love all of the time. The love that lasts is uncomfortable. It forces you to grow and change.

    Some mornings, loving my husband looks like waking up 15 minutes early to pack a lunch for him. But then when I come home, he's cleaned the bathroom. And nothing says romance like when the trash was taken out.

    Marriage is the only family you ever get to choose. You can only hope that you made the right decision and run with it regardless.
  • Thanks for sharing. It's great to see our generation finally starting to not make excuses for living our lives. So thank you for not apoligizing. And just living.

    As for the marriage issue, it's important to share honest, frank discussion. We get enough sap from Hollywood. Reality is more meaningful because people can identify with it.

    Choosing to choose, to participate: what a great message. It could save more marriages than we will probably ever know. I am with you in thinking that marriage is an act, not just an agreement. It's active, not passive. Every day is an opportunity to embrace those little things or rush by them. There's enough stuff to keep our attention focused elsewhere if we want to. So it is all about choices, and I applaud yours.
  • YManagingBoomers, I agree. I think people are very quick to give up on their marriages. I was close, for sure. But a marriage is not like a job or a business or a degree or an apartment lease or a game - you can't just quit because it gets hard. Probably if more people would stop associating falling out of love with growing apart they would realize that you can always fix growing apart by adding some empathy.

    Mike, not sure how you did it - I can't imagine starting a business with a kid at my age! You definitely have a very supportive wife.

    Dorie, I love your points - the first that "Love that lasts is uncomfortable" and the second that "Marriage is the only family you ever get to choose." I think the combination of these two is why people get divorced - because when things get uncomfortable people think they've made the wrong choice.

    Tiffany, as a newlywed you know just as well as I do about the "active" part. My problem was I thought I was active enough, but I was actually passive. It's easy to get that way when you're both busy, but this year I'm definitely going to be more aware of my actions.
  • Insightful post Monica. After 11 years of marriage, I still feel like I'm only just starting to decipher what works best for us. I'm on the other side of the curve where everyone has gotten married and now the divorces are starting to surface. Reading your post, I am reminded of this and find myself grateful for what I've got.

    Best Wishes!
  • I'm not sure I can comment because I'm single, but I'm going to anyway. Thank you for writing this post. It made me change a little bit how I look at relationships for the better, and believe that what I've felt about love/marriage for awhile now is actually true.
  • I am with you Monica. I'm 26 and my husband is 33...two DIFFERENT generations. I think the time we had to work on our relationship the most was when we were dating. He was set in his ways and I was young and ready to go... We only got married after we figured each other out. It was well worth it.
  • Fantastic post! I admire your openness and willingness to tackle a subject that people don't like to write / talk about.
  • It's such a relief to read a post that describes exactly what I'm experiencing. I've been married a little over a year now, and it often feels as if we're more roommates than husband and wife. I freelance full-time, and he freelances on top of his full-time job, and the two of us spend more hours than not sitting back-to-back at our computers until we finally just have to head to bed and pass out. We've tried incorporating evening walks and weekly date nights, but sometimes we slip (like lately). It's frustrating but it's also a work-in-progress, I suppose. And I guess that, as long as those lines of communication are open, and we're talking about it with each other, we're still doing okay. :)
  • Yeah, I would agree, marriage is definitely a work in progress. I certainly don't have all the answers yet, but I do know that making time for a marriage when both people want their careers is just plain hard. I'm writing another article on how I think marriage is going to change with the help of generation Y and some generation X pioneers. Definitely keep a look out for it, and thanks for the comment :).
  • Yezi.G
    I do appreciate your sharing, Monica.I'm not married yet but in a serious relationship (living together). These days I felt confused and sort of upset. The trivial details of life almost defeated me. Honestly saying, I even began wondering have I made the right choice. Is he really the right man? ...But you've told me that nobody will ever know if the decision is correct. Oh, what a relief for me. I'm not lonely.Anyway, be more active could make differences. I do love my boyfriend and I wish to get it (the marriage/the relationship) work out together with him.
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