It's Your Life. Live It!

Greg and I have dozens of friends who have commented on the ease and comfort of our relationship. Young friends often say they want to be us when they “grow up.” We always offer the same advice: talk about EVERYTHING!

But that’s not enough. Communication isn’t just about talking. It’s about noticing when something is “off” with your partner. It’s prying and poking gently until they spill it, then working WITH them to get to the bottom of it. It’s absolute, unconditional support! It’s never accusatory. Rather, you let them know how what they’ve done made you feel … that’s the real sticking point. 

It’s also about recognizing the “little things” can quickly become really big things. For example, I leave my shoes everywhere. It makes Greg crazy. However, instead of nagging me to pick them up or by responding passive/aggressively by hiding them (a particularly annoying quirk of his!) or leaving them on my pillow or something, he just lets me know how frustrating it is. It reminds me that his peace and mental health matter to me. After a dozen years of this, I’m better. He sees my effort to improve and it has become something of a good-hearted tease. He never became angry or shut down. That’s just ONE example of how we handle disagreements and reactions to personal quirks.

It’s easier than you think. When you first get together and realize you use a different toothpaste, so what? Buy two kinds of toothpaste! You drink Pepsi and he drinks Coke … so buy both sodas. You want the bedroom cold; he needs a warm night’s sleep? Get an extra blanket for his side of the bed. Couples spend too much energy on trying to be alike. Your differences are what attracted you in the first place! A little creative problem solving isn’t as hard as you might think.

There are many couples who look at marriage as the end game. I say it isn’t! When you say, “I do,” your life actually begins again. You can pool your resources and explore the things you have in common. After all, the reason you married is because you WANT to spend time with this person. You spend months, maybe years, rearranging your schedules and prioritizing time with that person. You skip time with friends to spend time together. You decline or refuse extra hours at work because you had a date planned … oh yeah, you actually PLANNED dates and spent hours talking about everything! Then you planned a wedding and made it permanent. 

Yet for many couples, things change. You start looking for opportunities to go away with your girlfriends. He spends the day on the golf course or at the lake fishing or playing cards with his friends. Date nights become rare. You don’t look for ways to be together, instead you look for ways to be apart. You rarely talk about anything or, when you do, it’s to point out that you’re out of toilet paper or need milk and eggs. You fall into bed, often alone, at the end of a long day only to be awakened hours later when your spouse finally joins you. Then you can’t figure out what happened to your marriage. You don’t feel valued or even significant to your partner … and isn’t that what we want out of a relationship?

The experts are right, marriage is work. You have to work at spending time together, talking about life, politics, food, hobbies — really, the same stuff you talked about when you were dating. You have to remember that, even when you’re in the middle of a huge, important project at work, you need to make time to be together. The trick is to recognize that when you’re doing something you love, it isn’t work! If you love this person you are married to, “working” on your relationship should be easy. I read something recently that got me thinking about a past relationship: “One day you’ll realize that I stayed when I had every reason to leave … but instead of appreciation, you gave me excuses and silence. When I finally stopped trying, you called me heartless. I didn’t stop loving you, I started loving me more.”

True love requires unlimited and unrelenting communication. Conflict doesn’t ruin relationships, avoidance does. Be OK with being awkward. Allow yourself to reveal the embarrassing and the uncomfortable. After all, you sleep in the same bed; you share a bathroom; you are closer to this person than your siblings. My best friend once said her indication that a relationship was serious was her ability to fart in front of the guy. It’s crass, sure, but it’s true! If you can’t do the most basic and normal things in front of your mate, then how can you share your most intimate thoughts? 

I constantly look at Greg and wonder how I got so lucky. We’ve been together for more than a dozen years and just last night we crawled into bed together then lay awake talking about the silly things that crossed our minds. We were like a couple of kids on a campout. We laughed and joked and stayed awake for another hour or so. At one point, I said to him, “Is it me, or does this feel like a honeymoon moment?” 

Marriage should be intimate and joyful. Even when you disagree, you should be able to talk it out. 

Take this for what it’s worth. I’m not a formally trained counselor. I have no license to provide professional couples guidance, but I have life experience … and after a couple of failures, I have achieved great success. I hope you do, too.

©Judy and Greg Romano – All rights reserved.