Marriage Ha-Ha Club

Description: This is a blog entry I wrote, inspired by the widespread acceptance of marriage as an ever-evolving state of misery. The entry has been truncated.
Date: January 26, 2011 

The eight months that I’ve been married to Austin have gone by far more quickly than the nine months that did between getting engaged and the actual wedding, and I am seriously excited for our one year anniversary.

I’m excited to take a little stay-cation, gussy up, and buy him a card that says, “To my husband on our anniversary.” I’m excited to celebrate us in a different way than we do on birthdays or on Christmas.

I love writing about my adventures in Marriage 101. I love it, because until now I simply had no idea what it would be like. No one does, really. Not until they’re there. The same goes for parenthood or home ownership, or the start of the career rather than just a job.

My mom sent me a couple of emails today. Both of them were jokes about marriage, and sure, I giggled. But it also made me think about the thousands of jokes there are out there about marriage that spawn from an attempt at finding humor in relationships desperate for some tenderness and empathy.





Women really are somewhat more observant, and while men can be equally as observant, a dirty mug left on a counter or a dusty TV screen tends to be a skid or two off their particular radar. (I’m not one to catalog people though, so I know this is exactly that – a generality.)

Women really are far more emotionally complex than men, and it really can cause tension in a home if she doesn’t learn how to speak up and explain herself from time to time instead of automatically assuming she’s sharing a bed with some insensitive neanderthal.

In our case? Allow me to share.

I used to think that there was little difference between being a student and being an employee. They both involve several hours of work, often doing something you aren’t particularly interested in doing and feeling as though you’re doing it for someone else.

I realize now that this isn’t true at all, and Austin’s student status and my position in the workforce can sometimes act as a wedge in our mutual understanding of one another.

When I get home from work, I don’t want to deal with anything else … I want to zone out, and I want to spend the last few hours of my short time at home doing what I want to do – those things involve checking to see what I’ve recorded on the DVR, stumbling around the Internet, perhaps working on my business or playing guitar.

 Austin's day is very different. In fact, it’s pretty different every day, the only constant being his class schedule. Frankly, it sucks that neither one of us can offer the other a whole lot of empathy with regards to what we’re doing with our days.

There are times where he’s trying to share something with me about film and I’m trying so hard to disguise the blank, somewhat confused look on my face … and he must wish that he had a wife who just got this stuff the way his classmates do.

My whole point in the beginning was that jokes and comics about the miserable curse of marriage can make me sad sometimes, sad that it’s come to this in real life for a lot of people. I’m sad that people marry for romance, when we should marry because we’ve fallen in selfless, agape love with our very best friend – the one person who will gently hold us accountable, who will teach us and make us better people and stronger stewards.