Marital Musings

Last week there was a post over on Solo Femininity about some of the things newlyweds learn during their first year of marriage. Maybe I just have marriage on the brain or something because I've been busy preparing for my friend Anna's wedding, which is in two and a half weeks, and my friend Heidi's wedding, which is in September. But whatever the reason, I've found myself thinking a lot about my own marriage and how much I've learned (and continue to learn each day!) in the past two and a half years of being married.

The biggest thing I've learned is that I'm really a terribly selfish person. I think you don't realize just how selfish you are until you get married. Going into it, I had no rosy, idealistic expectations about marriage--I knew that it would bring its challenges along with its joys. However, I thought that as girls go, I was relatively well-prepared. I knew how to cook, clean and change diapers. I could babysit screaming children for several hours at a time without losing my composure. Surely, caring for just one other adult person besides myself wouldn't be hard--right?

Obviously, I wasn't prepared for the 24/7 investment that marriage proved to be. It's true--there are no "days off." I'm so thankful for my loving and patient husband who daily proves himself less selfish than I am! I'm still not great at being married. I slip up all the time on that whole being-a-good-wife thing. But it's kind of like learning to walk--once you finally get both legs working together in sync you never want to go back to crawling. We've grown a lot, Daniel and I, and we've learned to love each other more selflessly, slowly but surely.