Things They Don't Tell you About Marriage.

Weddings. About 2.3 million couples wed every year. Which is about 6,000 per day. It’s a day where we celebrate two people entering into the coven of marriage. I myself have been married for a little over two years. It is, if you choose to get married, the most important decision you will make in your life. It affects everything in life from your stress levels, your interpersonal life, to even your gut microbiome! If you choose to have kids, fifty percent of your spouse's DNA immediately gets downloaded into your children. It even affects your outcome financially. When entering into a union, we always hear advice like: “marry your best friend!”, or “Don't go to bed angry!” In truth, most of the generic advice we get doesn’t tell the whole story. There are many things that aren’t mentioned, not out of malice but out of the fact that there are certain truths you won’t understand, unless you are in the thick of it. So here are a few things I’ve learned, along with some solid real advice I've gotten from long term married couples.

• Marriage is the LONG game.

Not only is who you marry one of the most important decisions you will make, it is also, if done right, potentially the longest time you will spend with a person. If you get married at 25 like I did, and both of you live to one hundred, that’s seventy-five years you will spend together. In those seventy-five years, you will both go through seasons together. If you were to take a quick snap-shot of your marriage, depending on what season it is, it may be a happy season, it may not be. I think in western culture, we expect our marriages to make us happy all the time. That is simply not realistic. In a lifetime together you will bury parents and other close family members, potentially have and raise kids, and in general experience the ebbs and flows of life. If your marriage is based on strong shared principles, a willingness to grow together, and acceptance that neither of you will be the same person you were on the wedding day, you will potentially be able to weather the storms brought to your door, as a united front.

• Marriage ISN’T fair.

One of my favorite movies ever made is The Joy Luck Club. It’s about the relationships between a group of Chinese American women and their immigrant Chinese mothers. One of the daughters, Lena, is married to a man in which they split the cost of everything right down the middle. During a tiff one night, Lena yells “Why do you have to be so goddamn fair?” In that moment she expressed what many people take a long time to learn. There is no such thing as 50/50, or fairness in a marriage. Where you as a person may lack in one regard, the other may be strong in, and vice versa. Ideally, each person brings one hundred percent to the marriage but there will be some days I can only give twenty percent, and there may be days where he can only give thirty. Sometimes we have to pick up the energetic slack and make it work. Is it fair that my husband works 40-60 hours a week to provide for our unit? No. Is it fair that I, as a woman, risk my life, and possibly my mental health to host a child in my body for nine months and give birth to said child, while also bearing the brunt of the societal expectation to raise them? No. What is needed for the success of a relationship isn’t necessarily fairness but polarity. Each person brings something unique to the marriage table, often reciprocally. And that reciprocal energy is what marriage thrives on. I know that my husband brings a lot of grounded, contained energy, and I bring a lot of creative, and flow energy. Both unique in characteristic but complimentary, and equal in action. As humans evolved, everyone in the “tribe” had a designated job, or skill and this is true in a marriage. You and your partner do not have to be equals in every way for a marriage to work. It is more important however, that each person honors what the other’s strengths are, while also having grace for their weaknesses.

• About love.

I remember one of my mentors, a woman in her sixties who has been married for a little over forty years, told me, “It doesn’t matter if you loved them when you first got together, it matters if you are in love when you die.” I was in my early twenties when she told me this and while it went above my head at the time, I credit her with introducing me to the concept of growing in love. Yes, I did love my husband when we first got married but as time goes by I grow more in love with him. I think in today’s culture, there's this whole idea of falling in love. Well, when you fall what happens? You have to get back up and you’re possibly hurt. Many times we see couples get divorced because they fell out of love with each other. But love is a verb as well as a noun. It is an idea, and an action. And you have to actively choose to love your partner and vice versa. Speaking of love, it is not enough to rely on love alone to sustain a long term bond. It takes commitment on both sides to the unit. There are going to be days where you don’t exactly like each other but if the both of you are committed to the marriage, you will be able to get through most things.

• Sex gets better during marriage.

If you are my parents or other family members please feel free to skip to the conclusion!

There’s this prevailing narrative that you need to test the person out in bed to see if you will be sexually compatible. The truth is, everyone knows how to have sex but true intimacy comes with time. You may know mechanically how to pleasure someone but in truth, it takes time to learn how to sexually please your partner fully. I think marriage is a type of long term commitment that really provides a container that allows you to open up to your partner fully. We are one of, if not the only mammals where the female of that species does not go into a period of sexual receptivity called estrous. As human women, we have evolved to be sexually receptive during all periods of our cycle. Because of this, human sexuality does not necessarily lead to pregnancy, meaning that the primary function of sex for us is to bond. Which is why a rush of oxytocin is released and you may feel closer to the person you are having sex with. In truth, while I was always sexually satisfied by my husband, I didn’t have my first full bodied, spiritual, and emotional orgasm until we were married for a little while. We are now very much in tune with how each other receives the other, and I think we both feel bonded and will continue to strengthen our bond as the years go by.

While marriage as an institution is quite modern, people have been having spiritual unions for as long as people have existed. I think that it can be a beautiful thing and manifest itself into many flavors. The things I've noted here aren’t steadfast rules because I don’t believe there are rules to marriage, since it's so individual. However, I will keep these things in mind as rough guidelines. I think that there are a lot of nuances to long term marriage overall, and I could honestly write articles on each one of these topics mentioned. I will leave you with this. No matter who you are, or what you think marriage looks like, or what you think of the institution itself, I think there’s something special about finding a person you can do life with.