They Looked So Happy

                   
I don't follow celebrities. Sometimes when I see the tabloids at the grocery store I don't even know who some of the people are on the cover. This was not always the case. When I first got married, my husband quickly figured that I'm not the kind of girl that appreciates flowers. So instead of bringing me home flowers, he'd bring me a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food and some trashy tabloid magazine. We didn't have extra money and so this was quite a treat for me.

I was always fascinated by the celebrities that were getting married and having children the same time I was. Gavin Rosdale and Gwen Stefani, Chris Martin and Gweneth Paltrow, David Arquette and Courtney Cox, Kate Hutson and Chris Robinson, Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen. It was an escape from my peasant life.

Then, they all broke up and it made me a little sad. Not, like, really sad. I wasn't personally invested or anything but I would think, "Oh, they got married the same year as me" or "Oh man! Their kids are the same age as mine." It gives me pause.

I don't keep up with celebrities anymore. I'd much rather read Southern Living than People nowadays. However, in the news this week there were many headlines about Anna Faris and Chris Pratt getting divorced. The comments made me laugh so hard. "But they looked so happy!"

You think they were happy?!?! They were working parents, in their 8th year of marriage and they had a 4 year old child. Seems like the time for things to fall apart.

The idea of marital happiness fascinates me. The only people that believe you need to be happy all the time to stay married, are people who are not married or have not been married long enough to know better. If you go into marriage expecting to be happy all the time, then you will be gravely disappointed.

I have a solid marriage. Right now, it's the happiest that it's ever been. I am grateful for that. We always joke that the first 9 years were the hardest. Certainly, all the years weren't terrible but it did take us almost that long to figure it out. There were times when my marriage was in the toilet.

When we were 22 and 23 we went to marriage counseling. We were struggling. We had been married over 4 years and we'd moved 5 times in those 4 years. We had just moved to the middle of the country where we knew no one. We had a 2 year old and a new baby. I was a senior in college, my husband was in his early 20's working for the Department of Defense trying to support a family of 4. We had barely enough to get by. My husband had been hospitalized with meningitis that summer which was traumatic, his father had just died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, among other things......

All of these things weighed on our marriage. We went to marriage counseling for a few months. We had no one to watch the children and we certainly didn't have money for a sitter. We scraped up all of our resources to pay for counseling. I remember walking in, spreading a blanket on the floor and setting my oldest daughter down with a few toys. I sat next to my husband with the baby at my breast. We resented each other.

It's easy to resent your spouse when you have young children. No one knows resentment like a mother, waking up for the 3rd time in the middle of the night to calm a fussy baby while her husband snores, who is exhausted from wrangling children all day and her husband comes home from work and sits down to watch a show to "unwind."

My husband resented me for not understanding the pressure of trying to support a family alone. It was hard for him to be replaced by the children. I didn't know how to be a wife AND a mother. I always gave so much to the children that there was nothing left for him.

So, there we at in the therapist's office and hashed out our problems. She would always drop hints about how we probably shouldn't have married at 18 and 19 and had 2 kids right away. Well, thanks for the insight, Captain Obvious!

We hated her. As a matter of fact, that is the thing about marriage counseling that brought us together- our mutual disdain for our marriage counselor. Who does she think she is, judging us? We're going to work this sh*t out. We'll show her!

Things got better. We worked at growing up, the children got easier to manage, we accepted our lives for what they were, and we worked on forgiving a lot.

If you have young children and your marriage is in the toilet - fear not! It is not unusual and it gets better.



So when we hit 9 years, the kids were 7 and 5. They were both in elementary school and we became more like a couple again instead of just mom and dad. Now, we both avoid the children together. We have much more time-just the two of us. As a matter of fact, we went out to dinner twice this week. It's been a re-discovery of sorts.

How do you stay married? The hell if I know. During those rough years, the things that kept us together were the fact that we are best friends and make each other laugh and that we think each other is hot. Long term marriages live off of oxytocin. It replaces that being "in love" stage.

It is sooooo wonderful to fall in love but it is a sickness. It would be exhausting to be in that stage forever. Your brain would be cloudy and you'd never get anything done. The early stages of love are all-encompassing and obsessive. Long term love might be less exciting. There are no pop song or movies about long term love but there is so much beauty in it.

I am attracted to my husband for different reasons than when we first got together. Whenever a super-hero movie or Star Wars movie comes out, he always takes the girls on a date. He takes them out to dinner and then to the premiere - just the 3 of them. Watching the excitement on his face when he ushers the children out of the door is hot.

The other day, he was sitting on the couch, watching a show. He looked so serious. I watched him with his newly shaved head, salt and pepper beard, and his big broad shoulders and strong arms. His is so strong. He could probably kill someone with his bare hands, I thought. "I want to give you 20 babies," I blurted out.

He turned to me like I was weirdo. "I don't want 20 babies."

I love that he knows me, he knows how to deal with me when I am being neurotic, he's always kept me tethered to the earth. I was feeling a little gloomy around the kid's birthdays. I was trying to be low-key about it but my husband wasn't buying it.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"I know you. What's wrong?"
"Seriously, nothing."
He wasn't buying it, "Okay, now tell the truth."
I sighed, "It's just that I feel like in 7 years, when the kids are out of the house, my life will have no meaning."
He laughed and put his arm around me. "Stop that. The kids will go to college and you will work full-time, work that you love. We will go on all kinds of vacations together and go out with friends. Then, they will get married one day, their husbands be our sons. Our family will grow with new people. We'll get to know their families. Then, we'll have grandchildren and we'll have them over. It's going to be great. It's going to be amazing."

He has a way of doing that, of helping me see the bigger picture. Of calming me. He's learned over the years.

We don't take ourselves too seriously. We had friends over a few weeks ago that have been married 2 years and I joked that I sent my husband a "picture" while he was out of town. It was a picture of my ingrown nail. They asked if I send other kinds of pictures. Ummmm.....no.

I would never send sexy pictures. That's something that girlfriends do - not wives of 15 years. My husband wouldn't even blink an eye. You don't get that excited about something you've seen thousands of times. I'd might as well send a picture of our front door. I live in reality. I always joke that when I go grey, I'm going to dye my hair blonde, get blue contacts, and an augmentation so that it'll be like being with a different person.

The other day he had me laughing so hard. "Being with the same women your whole life is like being in line to ride a roller coaster you've ridden 8 million times. It's not that exciting, you know where all the curves and drops are. But then you get on and it's still thrilling and you remember why it's your favorite roller coaster in the park, so you get back in line to ride it again."

"So, you are saying I'm like a roller coaster?" I laughed.

"My favorite roller coaster in the park," he replied.

"Well, 8 million is a pretty high number. We've only been together for like, 6,000 days."

"There is still time," he smiled.