Today is Tina’s and my 5th anniversary!
Are we still in love? Absolutely. Is it the same love as when we were first married? Absolutely not.
Five years ago I perceived going from single-and-in-charge to married-and-in-a-partnership as having some definite risks. Did we really want to be together 24 hours a day? What if our styles of co-occupancy were incompatible? What if our love went flat and we found ourselves miserable?
At that time, my love was the sort that said, “I love you so much that I’m willing to risk all these troubles to prove it.” This was a heroic, step-in-harm’s-way, give-your-life-for-a-cause sort of love. This isn’t a bad place to start, but it’s certainly not where we ended up. Eventually you’ve been married for a while and you know whether you can surmount those daily problems or not. And, whether you find them easy or difficult, you’ll need a love that grows from patience and kindness to get through it. Heroic love won’t last in long adversity.
Good news! We got through it! We figured out how to divide chores, when we should go to bed and wake up, what should be deemed appropriate time with and away from each other, and how—and for what—we should spend our money. But that’s just discovering how to surmount the potential pitfalls of two people becoming one financial and social unit. There is an upside, too!
Marriage isn’t the final result of love: marriage presents all the opportunities for the continued growth of love. My love isn’t heroic any longer: I don’t look to the years ahead of us and set my jaw and swear we’ll push through it somehow. Instead, I welcome the future and all the changes it may bring, and it seems natural now that we’d choose to step into it together. In fact, the uncomfortable proposition now would be facing it apart. Tina’s my first choice to support me through anything, and I want to support her through anything, too.
Is marriage restrictive to the individual? Perhaps from a certain point of view. But marriage also provides an opportunity for growth that the individual doesn’t have. You could ask whether the protective fence around a garden is restrictive to the plants growing within. It may look that way from one perspective (and to someone who doesn’t know much about plants). But if the ground inside that fence is tended by someone who cares, then the plants inside have a very good chance to thrive in a way the plants outside do not. I think that Tina and I are thriving.