You gotta lick a lot of spoons...

I was just 18 when my husband & I started dating. There were road trips to concerts, talking until the sun was up & then long distance phone calls & handwritten letters until he finally moved back to Georgia.
I'd decided at an early age that I would never marry. That didn't mean I was swearing off love, just marriage. In my short life I'd seen far too many people ruin a seemingly good thing by getting married & letting it change everything. It seemed I'd save myself a lot of time (Have you ever sat in the social security office? Time moves backward there!) & heartache by skipping the nuptials.

I was barely 19 years old when I accepted his proposal as a head-over heels, butt-crazy-in-love (didja catch my Clueless reference there?!) silly girl. After 3 years of engagement, the longest engagement in the history of ever according to some, we were married in front of family, both us 22 years old.

I have a photo of my dad walking me down the aisle that I still laugh at. I look like a deer in headlights. I look like a woman-child, unsure of what I'm getting myself into. I lost control of my facial muscles; they twitched as if I'd had a mini-stroke while I fought back tears. My dress seemed to weigh me down with each step as I clutched my dad's arm. And while I clutched at my dad's arm, I was thinking of a story I'd just been told in my dressing room. I don't remember who it was, but someone had come in to see me before the ceremony & told me this story about a husband & wife who wore their wedding attire each anniversary to see if they still fit. This sweet story then turned in to a sad tale of how the bride died in a head-on collision & she was found with her fingers still clutching the steering wheel. This was what I was still thinking about as my own fingers clutched at my dad before we rounded the corner & I saw my future husband. Luckily, I'm pretty sure I lost the deer caught in headlights look before too many people noticed & the sad tale of the dead woman was forgotten once I noticed Joe begin to cry. I still joke that I made it down the aisle by imagining the car accident & deciding that there were things worse than marriage. That is my dark sense of humor for you.

It is only after five years of marriage & being a little wiser that I can say with assurance that I was afraid of marriage because I thought it would somehow become my identity; that I'd lose myself. I grew up in an oddly traditional-but-not-really home where my mom worked in the home & raised me while my dad worked constantly outside the home to provide for us. By the time I was able to take care of myself for the most part, I feel my mom was more than a little lost & struggling to figure out who she was or could become at that point. After becoming a mom four short months ago, I realized that when I was a little girl, my mom sacrificed so much to focus entirely on raising me. I am forever grateful that she did that for me yet sad that it took all these years for me to understand the enormity of what she did, putting me before herself. I didn't understand how lonely it would be; sitting home alone with an infant who demands your full & constant attention.
Without realizing it at the time, marriage & motherhood went hand in hand & after what I witnessed growing up, I, at the time, subconsciously believed I'd lose myself becoming someone's wife & a mother.

At 22, I survived the social security office & name change, the new awesomely bad driver's license photo & settled in to living with a boy. I spent the first year rolling my eyes at Little Debbie snack cake wrappers strewn precariously around the house and a pile of dirty socks & wet towels tossed on the bathroom floor next to (not inside of) the hamper.
There were seldom arguments but the few we had were handled by licking every spoon we had in our utensil drawer & placing them back in with a smug look of satisfaction because Joe wouldn't eat off the same utensil until it'd been cleaned.
My sense of humor was mostly lost in translation with my husband. I remember saying something about the French language to him & someone how he thought that I spoke French. I playfully acted astonished that we'd been together so many years without this piece of knowledge coming to light. I began making sounds in a French accent (think of the episode of Friends where Phoebe tries to teach Joey for an audition) & before I knew it, Joe thought he was telling our dog Riley to sit in French. I promptly forgot about the entire thing until months later when Joe asked me how to say something else in French & I spent a while laughing before explaining I'd been joking.

The next couple of years, I think we began to get the hang of things. We learned to rely on one another, make decisions together & tell when the other was joking. Little Debbie wrappers began making it to the trash can & towels & socks found their way inside the hamper. I stopped licking the spoons because there was no longer reason to do so; we'd learned to talk about things. There was truly a sense of bliss as we realized we were as happy together as we'd hoped we'd be when we said our vows in 2008.
Mignon Mclaughlin wrote: "A successful marriage requires falling in love over & over again, always with the same person."
I've fallen in love with Joe several times as we've grown up & become many different people already in our lifetimes. He reminds me each day why I fell in love with him to begin with. There is no other man who would accept me as completely as Joe. He encourages me to do the things that inspire me & to be my own person; he is my biggest supporter, greatest defender. He looks at me in amazement after carrying his giant baby inside my body for 41 weeks & treats me as if I have super powers after giving birth & breastfeeding our daughter.

Every one deserves to feel the way my husband makes me feel.
It isn't always easy but these are the things I've learned in just five years of marriage:

Talk. About anything & everything. Bottling up things makes them fester & before you know it, you'll be licking spoons & whispering "Justice!" like that Flo woman on the insurance commercials.

Choose your battles wisely. Snack cake wrappers & dirty clothes should be the least of your concerns & not cause for marital discord.

Laugh. A lot. I still run in & wrap the shower curtain around Joe while he's showering. It keeps him on his toes. & there are always good days & bad days so laugh as much as you can. It gets you through the bad days.

Love wholeheartedly. You don't dip your toes into marriage testing the waters. You dive right in once you've decided to take your vows. Otherwise, what's the point?

Forgive. And when you forgive, really forgive. Don't say you did & then continue to bring it up.

Work at it, every day. Marriage is work. You invest your time, heart & effort. Of course you have to work to maintain your investment.

Remind yourself your marriage is your own. It is not your parent's marriage or anyone else's. Regardless of what you grew up believing marriage to be or how you watched it unfold for others, you don't have to follow what you saw or were taught. You get to decide together what you want it to be.

And last: It's okay if instead of having an idea of what you want your marriage to be you just know what you don't want it to be. 'Nough said.

The honest truth of the matter is that you go into marriage wide eyed & hopeful. You hope for the best, pray about it, work at it ...and lick a lot of spoons.