14 Lessons from Wives Who Think That Marriage Is "Easy"
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You probably know by now that when it comes to marriage, my point of view is that despite the almost immeasurable joy it brings, marriage is hard and also — marriage is hard.
In general, I think that most married people would agree. Except for these wives. They swear that marriage is easy — and that the rest of us just have it all wrong. Here are 14 lessons they have to offer those of us who could probably stand to lean more toward the “easy” camp:
1. Backgrounds aren’t everything.
Melissa Cohen, a 41-year-old mother of three children (12, 9, and 5), has been married for 12 years and says that her “easy” marriage was a surprise.
“My parents had divorced [and] it seemed as though everyone I knew growing up was either divorced or in unhappy marriages … When I imagined my future, I never pictured a husband.” But she describes meeting her husband as “magic” and says that everything changed in that moment. “It was romantic and sweet, passionate and totally all encompassing.”
One of the keys of an “easy” marriage may be the couples who see the struggles as an opportunity to draw closer instead of driving a wedge between them.
Early on in their relationship, Melissa suffered a miscarriage, an experience that she says showed her how empowering marriage could really be. “The loss, as devastating as it was, broke down all of my defenses in so many ways,” she says. “I felt safe with him, in a way that I had never anticipated and could not have predicted. Through the whole experience (it was a twin pregnancy, and I lost them about a week apart), he was the only thing that made sense to me.”
3. Your spouse is your best friend.
“[My husband] was (and still is) my best friend, my partner,” says Melissa. “We’ve been together for 13 and a half years, and he’s still the person that I most want to be with, the one I call first, and the person who’s always on my side.”
4. The relationship comes first.
“[My husband] and I have the same goals,” Melissa says. “And one of the most important goals is a strong, vibrant marriage, so we make it happen. Even when we’re fighting, I always know that we’re on the same team … I’d see a marriage counselor in a heartbeat, and I know that my husband would as well. Because our marriage is too important, it’s too vital to our family, to let it fail.”
4. Big differences aren’t a deal-breaker.
One of the things I most admire about Melisa’s marriage is that she’s not just floating dreamily down easy marriage lane — she’s actually navigating down some difficult marriage terrain; namely, the fact that she and her husband practiced different religions early on their relationship.
“He is Jewish, and I wasn’t,” Melissa explains. “I ended up converting about six years ago, and we discussed it endlessly. Working through our cultural differences, deciding on what we wanted and needed for our own identity and how we wanted to raise our children — that took (takes!) a lot of patience. But at the end of the day, what I want is our family, together, and he feels the same way.”
5. Compromise is key.
“I want [my husband] to have a great relationship with all of his kids,” continues Melissa, “and I do what I can to facilitate that. That means that we compromise. I never planned on letting my kids play with toy guns, or play video games, or watch zombie movies. But … he’s as much their parent as I am. I’m sure he never planned on co-sleeping or having kids who nursed into toddlerhood, but because I wanted that, that’s what we did.”
6. Marriage is about respecting each other’s crazy.
Want to hear my official theory on marriage? We’re all crazy, when it comes right down to it, so the key is respecting what makes our partner crazy and also being honest about our own crazy quirks.
Cohen says the key is picking your battles — and if something really bothers you, to simply do it yourself. “We tend to do the ‘if you don’t like the way I do it, do yourself’ and ‘if you feel really strongly about this, I’ll do what I can do get on board’ mentality,” she explains. “And it works. For example, I hate dirty dishes. The only I hate more than doing the dishes is having them in the sink waiting. So I do them, and I do it fast.”
7. Marriage means not taking the other for granted.
Where I’m more apt to pitch a fit about bearing the brunt of the at-home work in my marriage, Melissa sees things a lot differently than I do.
“I’m home with the kids more than he is (I just started working part-time after being home full time for the past ten years),” she says. “[But] we both know we couldn’t do what we do without the other. Without me at home, he’d never be able to focus at his job, and put in the hours required. Without him working so hard to provide for our family, there is no way that I would have been able to stay home until all our kids were in school. We don’t take the other for granted.”
That certainly sounds a lot more productive than complaining about who has it harder, doesn’t it? Note taken.
8. Having crap in common can help.
While opposites attract and all of that, when it comes right down to it, having something — anything — in common obviously can be key in a marriage.
“My husband and I are both very spiritually minded, both of us love to read, we both love politics and debating,” says Melissa. “Even when we disagree … we still have those in common. We value the same things.”
9. Enjoying your spouse’s company is kind of a big deal.
Remember what it felt like to genuinely just want to be around each other? Like the get-a-thrill-just-from-being-near in each other? These wives say they hold on to that feeling.
“I really, legitimately, love spending time with [my husband],” says Melissa. “He’s brilliant, funny and endlessly kind and I’m so, so grateful to have him.”
10. There is no one-size-fits-all, really.
While she’s happy to divulge her secrets to a happy and easy marriage, Melissa cautions that there really is no one-size-fits-all recipe.
“I’m not a huge fan of sweeping pronouncements,” she confesses. “What works for us might not work for everyone, but I do think that in order to have a happy marriage, you need to have honesty, absolute commitment, and really, really high standards.”
11. They are 100% honest.
Melanie, a 23-year-0ld mother of three, claims that although she and Tim never actually fight, they “talk about everything.”
“If something he says hurts my feelings, I tell him,” Melanie explains. “He doesn’t try to hurt me on purpose, so me telling him how I feel is the only way he realizes it even happened most of the time.”
12. They are deliberate about their relationship.
“We didn’t go into [marriage] lightly,” explains 27-year-old Katie. “We talked, planned, and made sure we were on the same page. We didn’t just come up with an idea of how we want our marriage to be, and then hope it turns out that way — we constantly are aware of what we want our marriage to be and we put forth the effort to keep it that way.”
13. They don’t keep score.
“We don’t keep score,” Edison explains. “I won’t be like, ‘Oh hey, I did the laundry last time — it’s your turn now!’ We both, constantly, do the best we can by each other. Marriage does not come with a scoreboard. It’s a team sport. If you try to “keep score” in marriage, you make it a competition. It’s not. You’re on the same side. Play it as a team, not a contest.”
14. They feel a teensy bit bad for you.
Katie just doesn’t understand couples who want to dwell on the little things. “Don’t pick fights about things that don’t matter,” she says. “If your spouse constantly leaves their socks in the ‘wrong’ place, don’t get angry about it. They are just socks. Pick `em up and move on. Not a big deal.”
In her eyes, marriage is definitely work, but it doesn’t have to be hard. “My honest thought when someone talks about how hard marriage is sadness,” confesses Katie. “I’m sad for the people who feel like their marriage is so hard, because I honestly don’t think marriage has to be hard. And it makes me sad.”
It makes me sad too, Katie. But not sad enough to pick up my husband’s socks.
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