Three things I’ve learned from 50 days of marriage.

Hello there! 

So 50 days ago I got married to the love of my life. Safe to say, I have no regrets, we are blissfully happy and every day I feel like I’m getting to know my husband, Aaron, in a deeper way. Nonetheless, I wanted to share three things I perhaps wouldn’t have thought important prior to marriage. Three things that our happy instagram photos wouldn’t tell you.

So here goes:

1. I am not the boss. So I’m a naturally bossy person. In fact, I can be quite obnoxious and I have a bad habit of thinking that I know everything. So when it came to marriage, of course I was ready. I had been reading relationship books for years. I knew all about love languages and gender differences, I was confident I’d be a loving, serving, patient, supportive wife. Seriously, I thought I was SO ready. Fifty days later, I am realising more and more every day how wrong I was. That whole submission thing? Nah. That is some serious hard stuff. Of course it’s easy to submit in some ways, I love Aaron being in charge, taking direction from him is a blessing, but the minute he suggests something I disagree with – or doesnt agree with my incredibly amazing wonderful perfect genius (I have so many of them) – the bossy girl in me come through. It comes through STRONG.  Thankfully I have a super gracious husband because I seriously struggle with not being my own boss anymore. That’s not to say I do whatever Aaron tells me, but just having another person to consider and wanting to not override his opinions and judgement; that is humbling to another level. I had no idea my ego was so huge until I got married.

2. Aaron is not God. I think a common misconcept of marriage, especially newlyweds, is that you spend every waking moment together. With me working Mon-Fri 9-5 and Aaron as a freelance guitarist, we found immediately following marriage we were thrown into a world where we had to plan time together. Even now, sometimes I feel as if we may have spent more time together before being married, but I guess with life and its busyness, that’s just the way it goes. Right. So, another thing I’ve learnt is that even in marriage, Aaron cannot be my everything. See, I talk a lot (One of the reasons I’ve started blogging. I need someone/something to yap away to!) and often I expect that Aaron should be willing to listen to me 24/7, show the most interest in my life, constantly want to watch romantic movies with me, etc etc. I mean, why wouldn’t he want to come to a work meeting with me on a Saturday morning? 🙂 Having spent some time thinking over this, I’ve noticed a pattern in most of my desires. They’re not wrong at all, I think within most, if not all, women is the desire to be desired, loved, wanted, pursued. And often, even in marriage we look to our partner to do this. That’s where I went wrong. Aaron could never fulfil me, I would always need more from him, that ‘more’ that he couldnt give. The need for affirmation in marriage constantly brings me back to the One who forever desires, loves, wants, seeks and pursues me. To expect Aaron to match up to a perfect Father just isn’t fair. I know that what God wants for me is to spend more time with Him, soaking up all He has for me, His love, His peace and then love my husband out of the overflow of that. 

(Side note: I am SO not that woman. lol. I do not wake up 2 hours early to meditate on the word and float around the house. Ha. But I’m getting there. Determined to be a Word-filled, floaty wife.)

3. There is still a plan for me. Naturally, I have been so caught up in being Mrs Forbes-John. Aaron’s wife. I do believe God has given me a passion and desire to be a wife & homemaker, so in some ways it’s super exciting to be living out His will for me, and it is a serious blessing to be able to support and serve Aaron in a way no one else can ever do. However, I did neglect for a bit (until literally a few days ago) that God still sees me as me. As Jennifer. Which means I can still dream and plan and be full of ideas and do things that don’t actually have any relevance to Aaron. To some of you that might be like, DUH! But to me, this was a bit ground-breaking. I had in my head that us being married would mean we have the same friends, do the same things and not in every area, but I thought there would be a lot more overlap when in reality, there isn’t. So this means I can tap into what God wants me to do and relax knowing that our marriage means there will always be an overlap; no matter how diverse are lives are. (Right now Aaron is living it up in a beautiful hotel in Dubai for work, whilst I am left writing this on a TOSHIBA because he has the macbook and I’m cold. See; diversity.)

So there we have it. My three challenging areas of marriage amongst many others: loneliness, sex, housekeeping. Oh the list keeps growing. There’s so much to learn and although it can be somewhat draining on the emotions, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Marriage is a blast.