Seventeen Years
17 years ago, I stood in front of a room full of people who loved us and promised my wife, Abigail, that would spend the rest of my life with her. Now, to be fair I had no idea what I was promising. I was a kid. 20 years old. I am sure I thought love was a feeling that I needed to protect, but what I have learned since then is that love is closer to a craft. It’s something you get better at by showing up and practicing badly for a long time until one day you look over at the person you married and realize you like her more than you did when you were 20 years old had no idea what you were doing.
Now, we are not a model couple. We have had some rough years, some hard conversations, and times where we felt like roommates managing a household instead of two people who chose each other. But what I can tell you is that we love each other more now than we did on our wedding day and when I think about why, three things keep surfacing.
1. We have a ton of fun.
This is the one people underestimate. Abigail and I do almost everything together. We cook together, do laundry together, we go to the grocery store together (most of the time), we clean the kitchen together, we go on walks together, we read books together (different books at the same time), and we genuinely just enjoy being around each other. None of that is romantic on paper, but it has become the substance of our marriage and here is why.
Somewhere along the way we decided that the boring parts of life were going to be the parts we spent together, and once you make that decision you start looking for ways to make them enjoyable.
We make each other laugh constantly. We are ridiculous with each other in a way that I hope our kids find embarrassing for the rest of their lives. But it takes intentionality. Fun does not happen to married people by accident after a certain number of years. You have to keep reaching for it. Keep making the joke. Keep suggesting the thing that sounds mildly inconvenient.
2. We say the hard thing.
Nothing gets to fester in our house. Now, it took years to get there, but nothing gets to fester. Early on in our marriage I used to beg Abigail to fight with me. She didn’t want to tell me when I hurt her. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to avoid conflict at all costs and would carry it around quietly and I would have no idea anything was wrong. 17 years later, she has ZERO problem walking into the room and letting me know exactly where I messed up. Seriously. It sounds like I am joking, but I am actually grateful for it.
My growth went a different direction. I have always overshared. Feelings come out of me whether I plan them to or not which has spared us a lot of silent resentment even though it hasn’t always been graceful. For a lot of men, this is the harder work.
Pew research found last year that only 21% of men had gotten emotional support from a friend in the past week, and 41% of women said the same.
That tells me that men reach for people less. And a lot of that comes from a culture that tells men that their inner life needs to be managed privately, and then we act surprised when marriages quietly starve.
The strongest thing I know how to do as a husband is to tell my wife when I am struggling before it turns into something she has to discover.
3. We protect each other.
Everything in our lives is competing for our attention. There is work, and phones, and kids, and church, and the endless list of things that feel urgent. Marriage is one of the few relationships that will never demand your time loudly enough to win that fight on its own. It just waits patiently while you give yourself to everything else, and then one day you notice you have become strangers who share a mortgage.
So, we decided years ago to make time for each other on purpose. Over and over again. For 17 years. Date nights we couldn’t really afford. Conversations that went well beyond bedtime. Weekends where the answer to a really cool opportunity was no.
The book of Ecclesiastes says that a cord of three strands is not easily broken, and I have come to read that as a description of maintenance rather than some sort of magical formula.
Strong cords hold because someone keeps weaving them.
17 years in, and that is what I have. Have fun with the person you married. Tell them the truth quickly. And guard the hours. None of it is super complicated, it just takes being intentional and making it a priority.
Try the examen this week. This practice comes out of the Ignatian tradition and it takes about 5 minutes at the end of the day. You sit down somewhere quiet and walk back through the last 16 hours of so. While doing this you look for 2 things:
Where did you feel most alive, most connected, and most like yourself?
Where did you feel drained, small, or far away?
This isn’t you grading yourself or anything, it’s just you paying attention and then handing both of those moments to God before you go to sleep. I have found that most of us move through our days at a speed that makes reflection impossible, and so this is a way of slowing down enough to notice what our own lives have been doing to us.
Do it for 7 straight days and see if a pattern shows up.
I preached this past weekend on how the Spirit grows us in community. Many of you asked if it would be recorded so I thought I would share it here. I don’t want to make it a habit of recommending my own stuff, but the sermon is linked below if you would like to watch it this week.
I got this message from a reader recently and it brought me so much joy. It means so much that they find my writing relatable. Messages like these are a great reminder that there are actual people on the other side of this. I am so grateful for all of you and your support.
Have a great week, yall.
Great post!! you and your wife are very lucky to have found each other because that true and deep love is not easily found. I’m on my second marriage and my husband and I we’ve been together for 1 to 2 years and I’ve been married 14 of them, so it’s much better this time. I think I’ve learned a lot in my first marriage and I’m sure he did too but if you have love and true deep love and love them through it all you’ll survive! Congrats to you and your wife and wishing you another 50!
Great point: “tell my wife when I am struggling before it turns into something she has to discover” - my issue has been my long held belief that as a man, {whatever thing} is my cross to bear, don’t burden her, etc. All in the VERY mistaken notion that she won’t know something’s wrong as long as I bottle it up tightly enough.
Surprise! Mi esposa has always noticed when something is wrong and I’m suppressing it. I’ve learned over the years it’s usually a relief to her for me to tell her what’s up with me (“oh, is THAT all? I was thinking it was a real problem” LOL). And Surprise #2, when I can express my needs or wants I’ve just moved one step closer toward achieving them, and she’s generally a gracious partner in my getting there. 🎼 “I wish that i knew what I know now when I was younger…”