Just the Two of Us

I feel like I’ve been dispensing a lot of advice lately at all sorts of events and I have to say, once again, that I feel very unqualified to do so.  At least twice last week my advice was solicited and I humbly complied.  The first of course was the email that my pregnant friend sent out.   But just this weekend at a friend’s bridal shower, all of the attendees had to write down their best marital advice and give it to the bride.  I think that some of my friends were expecting a funny quip from me, and while I really wanted to give them a good zinger about marriage, I ended up showing my true colors and ultimately wrote something mushy and sentimental.  I guess I could’ve pretended like I was a cynic, responding to an inquiry like, “What do I do when I can’t make spaghetti the way his mom made it?” with a, “Tell him he should’ve married his mom and feed him cereal.”  But the truth is, I love being married.  I believe in it.  Not in a Santa Clause sort of way, but I think God smiles upon it, the universe applauds it, that sort of thing.  Sure, my husband and I had a rough go of it over the past year and I can honestly say our determination, patience and even our affection for one another have all been tested but, I’m still confident that we’ve passed those tests and have come through still in tact, still in love.  On this Valentine’s Day I feel especially grateful for the man in my life who seven years ago today proposed to me after nervously sweating his way through a dinner that he couldn’t even eat.  I said yes, of course, that day and every day since then. 

Shortly after we were engaged, someone asked me if I thought my soon-to-be-husband was my soul mate.  I thought it was a very bold question that I could’ve taken offensively had I not known this person very well.  I answered simply, “I don’t believe in soul mates.”  Not in the traditional sense, anyway.  I don’t believe that there is only one person perfectly suited for you out there in the universe.  What a pain that would be to find your “perfect match.”  What if he died when he was a kid?  No soul mate for you.  That's a cruel way to look at love.  And what is a perfect match anyway?  Is it finding someone who likes the same movies as you, listens to the same music or reads the same books?  Those are great qualities to have in a friend, but not necessarily enough to create a deep bond that will last until one or both of you dies.  I’d like to believe that real love goes deeper than that.  There is an undefined element of love that even the dating websites can’t calculate into their equations.  They can match you with someone who looks great on paper but if “it” is not there, love doesn’t happen.  “It” is an “x” factor, if you will, that matches your soul to another.  And that’s what a “soul mate” is to me, not the one person that will “complete you” or who is going to be an extension of your ego, but someone who does something good for your soul, someone your soul says “yes” to.  Because the truth is, there is not just one person out there for every person.  There are lots of someones out there.  The responsibility shifts then from the grandiose idea of the universe bringing someone to you to the simple act that separates us from the animals, free will, or the act of choosing.  And that’s what marriage is, the great choice, saying yes over and over again to the same person.  It’s a choice that you have to make every day.  Otherwise, you will end up a depressing statistic.  Why do 1 in 2 marriages fail?  Because people stop choosing what is right in front of them.  I can’t help but think it’s also because we are a culture that thrives on newness, because something better is always on the table, something exciting is always on the market.  All of the couples counseling and sex therapy in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t look at your husband or wife and say, yes.  I want this.

And that’s essentially what I wrote as my advice to my engaged friend.  I wrote that marriage is a choice and to keep choosing your husband, even when times get tough, and they will, trust me.  I know.   Keep choosing your husband even after you have kids, when your marriage is strained, when your son demands all of your time and attention and he will, trust me.  Keep choosing your husband even when all you talk about when you are alone on a date night is your little one and how he said the darndest thing and how cute the little buddy is.  Because you will.  Trust me.

There are other tidbits of marital advice I can think of, like, to go out as much as you can before you have kids.  Go on vacations and go to the movies and dance a lot.  Because when you have kids you are so tired by the end of the week that you don’t want to go out.  Just going to bed early is exciting enough.  Recently a group of my girlfriends got together and while they were all excited to go out, I thought, eh.  It’s okay.  It means I have to put forth a huge amount of effort to make sure the baby is taken care of, my clothes are all clean and my hair is fixed.  I know, you’re thinking that I’m lazy but hey, a night out is a lot of work, and that’s when it’s just me.  Forget about it if I’m taking my son and husband with me.  Going out to eat is a craps shoot where you have to be ready for anything, mostly a meltdown in the middle of a crowded restaurant.  We've almost stopped going out altogether.  When we do eat out, we have to give up the mealtime power struggle in public so we ourselves can eat.  It doesn’t make us parents of the year, but at least we get to enjoy our food.  It’s certainly not romantic, in any sense of the word. 

My husband said the other day, “Remember when it was just the two of us and we could just go out and eat anywhere we wanted or take a nap together in the afternoon or just get in the car and drive somewhere?”  And I reminded him, “Yeah but now we have something better.”  It’s the truth.  I look at my husband playing in the snow with my son, or when they’re in bed together taking a nap, or when he takes my son’s hand to walk down the street and it makes my soul feel good.  It’s romance redefined, fulfilling in a way that flowers and candy never were.  We have a living, breathing, walking, talking symbol of love.  We love each other so much that it produced this beautiful life.  And even though our date nights are scarce and you can guess what we talk about most of the time, we are more in love today than we ever have been.  After all this time, we get each other.  We get to have each other and we actually get each other, as in, he so gets me.  At the end of the day, I get into bed with someone who gets me.  And I get him.  As long as we both shall live.