Marriage, Year 1: Five Things I Learned about Striving to be a Holy Spouse

I recently attended a wedding that made me feel nostalgic for the early days of my marriage. The bride truly couldn’t have been more beautiful as she processed down the aisle on the arm of her father with her veil over her glowing face. Her husband-to-be had beamed at her as she appeared, despite his nerves. Later they pronounced aloud to us all their perfectly memorized vows and we all cheered as they sealed it with a kiss. I’m not usually one for such incredible sentimentality in this context, but tears had welled in my eyes at the joy, beauty, and romance of it all. God makes all things new and the start of my friends’ new life together was making me feel more than blessed to be a witness to it all.

As I waxed nostalgic on my own “newlywed year,” I recalled that for as much joy that there is in marriage, there can also be conflict. Marriage takes a lot of work to make work. The first few weeks, months, and even year of marriage can be a bit tricky. You are now living with this person you have never lived with before, there’s a lot of pressure to get the most out of this first year of being a newlywed, you just dropped a lot of money on a huge party, and you have to figure out how to balance the politics of this all with work, friends, and family.

It can be hard to hear God’s voice above the hubbub of everything else during this time. It led my husband and I to argue more than I thought we would during our first year of marriage. As I now enter further into Year 2 of our marriage, we find that the times of greatest adversity have been when we weren’t sacrificing our own selfish needs for the greater good of our marriage as a whole. I can say with 110% confidence that my marriage is my greatest joy in life. My spouse truly does lift me up when I am down, completes me through his own quirks, challenges me to serve God better than I ever have before, argues with me when we need to yell it out, hates my flaws but loves me for it anyway, and so much more. It truly takes us a lot of selflessness and work to be the way we are, and we don't always get it right all the time, but we have found the greater glory of God in this vocation and I trust in Jesus to help us figure out the rest.

On making the effort to spend time together, but also to spend time apart: As individuals, my husband and I are a mix of introverted and extroverted. There are some days that we want to be around friends because that sort of companionship both drives and sustains us. Conversely, there are other days when we just really need to spend some time alone to “recharge our batteries,” as it were. The trouble is, those feelings and social schedules don’t always sync up for the two of us. It might be our “Friday Night Date Night,” but at the end of a long work week, one of us may not be ready to venture out into a crowded, loud restaurant. In such a situation, instead of pouting or harboring resentment that we want to get our own way, we give way to sacrifice based on whosever need is greater. When we put the other person first, it balances out in the end, and there’s no need for us to keep tally.

On finding a holy couple to serve as mentor: When it comes to figuring out how to be a married couple, my husband and I look to the men and women around us who have been in lasting, fruitful marriages. We admire these married couples for their faithfulness to the Church and each other, the wholesomeness of their children, and other similar attributes that, in our eyes, make them good role models for our own marriage. We have been blessed to be able to engage in relationships with such couples, and continue to look to the example that they lead.

On recognizing that our individual relationship with God may work in entirely different (yet equally holy) ways: When we were engaged, my husband and I would go to Sunday Mass, Reconciliation, and parish events together. We would frequently discuss theology and philosophy, and based on his insights, I assumed that our prayer lives were on the same page as well. Once we were married, I insisted that we pray together each night before going to sleep. What ended up happening was an awkward effort to fuse our two different styles of prayer (I was more interested in free flowing conversation with God, whereas he was more into memorized prayers of Adoration, Contrition, Petition, Thanksgiving). Often our prayers didn’t end up being with or for God, but more of a consolation/desolation discussion between ourselves. Although this was not a bad thing, we decided that, for now, we should do our nightly prayers on our own so that God can more respectfully receive what was due unto Him.

On trying not to keep even little things too close to our chests: Though God created woman from the rib of man, we are entirely different beings, and what bothers me isn’t the same as what bothers my husband. I get annoyed to no end when he leaves dishes in the sink while the dishwasher is immediately next to it, or when he leaves his undershirts inside of his work shirts or well, I digress. What’s important is, my husband and I let each other know that these sorts of things are bothering us before we allow them to build up inside. When we don’t follow this, it can lead to explosive arguments at inopportune times, or worse, a silent distance between each other, and ultimately distance between ourselves and God.

On finding humor in each other’s quirks and loving the other person all the better for it: I am neurotically organized and find peace and calm in organizing physical things around me. The whirlwind of me bringing “peace and calm” into my environment doesn’t always bring anyone else peace and calm. I tend to launch into cleaning during times when—if I was being respectful and attentive—I ought to be sitting still (like when my husband and I are reading or watching TV together). I know that it annoys him to no end, but I’m also uncertain that it’s something that I can completely change about myself. He knows this, and loves me for it anyway. Instead, as I’m dusting something that I had just wiped down the day before, I’ll look up, and our eyes will meet. I’ll know that he’s thinking how absurd my behavior is, and he’ll know I know he's thinking that, and so we laugh out loud together. There’s no judgement here. There’s no need for either he or I to change something that we cannot about ourselves.

For as long as we are walking The Way together in this journey of faith, led by the teachings of the Catholic Church, we are working to serve the will of God in this holy union that continues to bless us each and every day.