A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time. ~Anne Taylor Fleming
I think maybe 20 years might qualify as long. Im going to go ahead and assume we qualify, since at this point kb & i have been married our entire adult lives - and that's if you consider 23 an adult. which i clearly wasnt at the time, but certainly THOUGHT that i was.
so today we hit the miracle (in these days) milestone of 20 years. and figured it was about time i let you guys in on the craziness that is US. after all, i wouldnt be ME without HIM at this point. i've officially lived with kb longer than my parents - so now it's officially his fault that im this crazy mess.
A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~Paul Sweeney
Im pretty sure that anyone who knew us when we met would have given our chances at staying together about 10%. we are from different states, with close families who wanted us home after college. not to mention i am now and have always been a hot mess. kb is now and has always been the nicest guy in the room. zero chance of success when looking at it from 19 year old eyes. sure, he was (and is) super cute. and awesome at lacrosse. great smile. fast as lightening on the field. totally laid back off the field. PERFECT college boyfriend. right? hot, fun & friendly. can't do any better than that. but he was a year behind me in school and i was going back to MD and he was going back to ROCHACHA, so while we talked forever (like young kids in love do), we probably weren't serious. life changes fast at 21. and apparently at 22 as well. because that's the year it became serious. i was back in MD, working in DC, buying a condo - living my post grad life. kb was in school, doing his thing - kicking ass in lax and getting ready to graduate. one little visit right after graduation, while he was still in RI and BANG - you guessed it.....pregnant. hey there, reality, it's nice to meet you. 22, living in different states, barely out of school - no pressure, kb.
One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again. ~Judith Viorst
so that was our beginning. we have literally been parents EVERY SINGLE SECOND of our 20 year marriage. and we have been so incredibly lucky. and stupid. we have done so many things wrong. and we have gotten some things really right. and this my friends, is what i've learned and what i most admire about my life and my guy, 2o years later:
- life is hard. alot. marriage is hard. also alot. but when you have a partner, its hard together. and sometimes that shared burden makes all the difference. i find that balance is everything. we learned VERY early on that we both couldnt be having a bad day at the same time. it just didnt work. we were both tired. ALL THE TIME. kb worked days and was dad at night. i worked nights and was mom all day. we both slept about 3 minutes a day. and if my husband has one serious flaw, its that TIRED is his kryptonite. tired kris is NOT pretty. or funny. he's pretty mean. maybe cranky is better - he's never really mean. but ZERO fun. and my kryptonite is hungry. hangry was pretty much made up for me. hungry deni is MEAN. seriously mean. so we figured out pretty early on, that THIS was only going to work if we tried to avoid those things. the good news is that kb can not eat for days, and i require very little sleep. so when the demons came out, we were able to pick up the slack for each other. it was our very first lesson in what it would take to weather the coming storms. don't let kris go too long without sleep. and for god's sake feed deni. pretty much still true today.
Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity. ~Author Unknown
- when you are in over your head, start swimming. forget about that stupid lifeboat. no one is coming to rescue you. but if you keep moving, soon you will be in a different place. it may not be better. but it will be different. and usually that's all it takes. you guys that read this know i have had 400 different jobs. kb has had ONE. yes i said 1. in 20 years. ok, 19. but you get the idea. my man is NOT going to change. for about 100 years that drove me crazy. it was the source of a zillion fights and large amounts of angst. unnecessarily come to find out. because guess what. i clearly was never, NOT EVER, going to win. kris is constant. so when things needed to be changed, i did it. often unpleasantly. and i probably (or definitely) didnt appreciate what his unwillingness to change provided my family. stability. at the time it just seemed stubborn. looking back, i was able to take risks because i knew he never would. there has not been one minute in 19 years that we havent had insurance. i didnt care about that when i was 25 or 27. but you can bet your ass at 43 i think its AMAZING. our life for the first 10 years was all about babies. and while we never had enough money (or thought we didnt anyway), we had security. kb has been swimming steadily, at his pace, for 20 years. and we are where we are because he never stopped.
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. ~George Levinger
- sometimes its not worth the fight. period. i spent a lot of time the first part of my marriage trying to change things (ie kb). i had an idea in my head about how thing were "supposed" to be, and tried my damndest to get there. and just like with everything else you try to force, it didnt work. and i spent a lot of time frustrated. interestingly, when josh was about 2, i went to my pediatrician at the end of my rope. literally. i was afraid i was going to lose my mind. josh was the single most stubborn human baby ever born and i wanted to throw him across the room sometimes (i didnt, but i thought about it). my super amazing pediatrician said this - DON'T fight every fight. some things just dont matter. only fight the fights YOU NEED TO WIN. and then WIN THEM. light bulb. that one piece of advice opened my eyes. not only to handling josh, but to how my hubby lived his life. in his life, I WAS JOSH. he only fought with me when it really mattered to him. and he pretty much always won those fights. clarity is pretty cool. so i wont say we stopped fighting, but i will say it became much more normal to just say to kb - are you going to fight with me about this? and if he said yes, we just skipped the fight. not worth the irritation and the energy. growing up is awesome. sometimes :)
Most marriages can survive "better or worse." The tester is all the years of "exactly the same." ~Robert Brault
- whatever works, do that. what works for us may not be what works for you. i have no idea. but i do know that monotony kills. between the 2 of us in 20 years we have coached about 30 teams, started 2 leagues and continued to play sports ourselves. we are parents, friends, lovers & athletes. why do i include athletes? because ironically, sports in many ways has kept us together. it has created a community of friends, provided an outlet for our kids and for us, and given us the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we can still have fun and compete. kris & i are competitors. and when we decided to try to NOT be those parents who lived vicariously through our kids victories, we went out to get our own. i'm sure i spent too much time playing softball. and kris spent too little playing lacrosse. but we each had our own things. an outlet that wasn't about the kids or the family every single second. we have made mistakes and made compromises. but it works for us. all of it. i know that because we are here. still. after all this time.
20 years later, kris and i still fight. he is still mean when he is tired and im still a bitch when im hungry. we still put our kids first, and still try to find time to pursue our own interests. kris is still constant. and i am still crazy. and yet, somehow it all works. what i have really learned is that there is no right answer. there isnt some magic formula for success. and really success is all in your head anyway. we havent so much managed to stay married for 20 years, as kept our unit together. because at the heart of it all, that is what we are. kris and i are not the measure of our success as a married couple. our FAMILY is what matters. the boys were ultimately the reason we first got married, and probably a million times in the last 2o years why we have let stuff go. our unit means everything. and i am the luckiest woman alive to have been able to live these last 20 years in this place, with this family, and this guy. love you kb. thank you for being my best friend, the best dad, and for NOT jumping off the roller coaster the many many times you have been tempted.
Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow. ~Swedish Proverb
