2 Years Into Marriage

Why the first two years of our marriage have been the toughest of our entire relationship.

Adam and I have been together for over a decade, and living together for more than half of that.  I really thought that marriage would be a simple, almost invisible transition for us.  A couple of rose gold rings and a new title, just surface level stuff.  I don’t know what it was, but the power of exchanging vows in front of all our friends and family brought profound shift within us and our relationship.  All this time, being thoughtful and patient about each stage of our union, brought us into marriage at a time of great personal chaos.

I feel like we’re often hesitant to share our struggles.  In this new(er) age of social media highlight reels, it doesn’t feel right to infuse TOO much truth in there, especially when it’s negative.  Which, I get, as I prefer to keep my online world as upbeat as possible.  But, I just couldn’t write a post about our wedding anniversary and not make it completely transparent.  I just couldn’t.

These two years of marriage weren’t at all what I expected them to be.  The exaggerated pendulum swinging ups and downs were really tough.  I tried to touch a little bit on it in my anniversary post last year, but we were in the middle of it all and I think I was kind of embarrassed.  It seems like everyone is SO happy together by their online love notes and it felt isolating to be having these moments that weren’t exactly lovely.  I feel like we’re exposed to the sappy declarations of relationship bliss, or that person that airs out their dirty laundry to the internet as their union crumbles.  Where’s the healthy conflict and struggle in between?  It can sometimes feel lost amongst the extremes.

Long term relationships, married or not, are tough at times.

The last time we’d had this much strain on our relationship was in the very beginning, which I’d chalked up to be a normal hurdle to jump.  It’s an adjustment to enter into a commitment, so it’s understandable that we’d go through a few rough patches.  Reflecting on that now though, I think that we’ve just been going through the same thing all these years later, which is personal change and growth a.k.a a slight identity crisis.

Adam and I have worked really hard and gone through some very honest conversations over the past few years.  We’ve had to seek outside help and really slow our lives down to repair things.  We have been practicing gratitude and communicating as openly as possible, and finally in the last bunch of months, things are back in a really great place.

I’m sure people go through something like this at various times in any relationship, so I just wanted to open up about how this happened to us.  I don’t write this for you to feel bad about our marriage, or worse, judge us for our hard times.  Rather, I wanted to share this for anyone else weathering a relationship storm right now.  You are certainly not alone.  It takes a lot of effort from both parties to iron things out, but if you’re both willing to adjust and better yourselves, it can absolutely get easier once again.

We had lots to celebrate this wedding anniversary, being in a better place and hopeful that the worst is behind us.  I really think it is.  It feels therapeutic to open up this dialogue with you, so thanks for listening (reading).

Photo by White Linen Photography (can’t wait to share the rest of the photos with you!)