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This is stressful.

This season of marriage is the stressful one, after six years (omg, we’re coming up the seven year itch, it totally makes sense now!) and three kids and one too many layoffs. The season of pretending to fall asleep right away or did he really leave without saying goodbye? This season of the demands of young children weighing on you like a cloak of heavy, guilt-ridden exhaustion that you want to simultaneously throw off and yet treasure forever like a precious family heirloom.

I knew we would get here eventually, I suppose, but I can honestly tell you that I didn’t anticipate that marriage really would be about so much darn work. I know, I know, everyone says that marriage takes work, but they also said the first year is hard, so I thought, what do they know?

But they were right about the work part. And maybe that’s why the first year isn’t so hard-there’s not a whole lot of work to be put in. Coming home at night is still fun, setting the table isn’t a battle, dinners don’t have to be cleaned up right away in time for baths and bedtime.

Back during that first year of marriage, our lives were still about being together. Yes, we were a family, but a family that we had chosen and that we would cultivate together. As marriage evolved, it would appear that the lines got a little more fuzzy. There’s no you-me, there’s us-you-them-and-who’s-in-our-bed-again. It can be so, so hard to remember to put focus on your spouse.

Maybe I’m just abnormal in how my marriage has played out so far, but I can almost laugh when I think about calling my first year of marriage the hardest. It seems I would have had a lot to learn if that were truly the case. Read More