How to Be Married for Five Years
A Quick Preamble
Five years of marriage. That’s a lot to some, and very little to others. Regardless, sharing my thoughts on five years of partnership.
♥️,
Stef
Advice
On Nov 3, 2023 Ronnie and I are celebrating five years of marriage, and twelve years of togetherness. I don’t think I’ve ever made the claim that my marriage is perfect, that said, I don’t think any marriage is (or relationship at all, for that matter). What I do know is I am truly, madly, deeply in love with Ronnie and I hope that I can share a little bit about what’s making our love work, in hopes of it inspiring your love (or future love).
About 2 years ago, I set an intention to make our relationship stronger, the words I used to express this intention was to create a “Monumental Marriage” and with this intention, our relationship has grown to a place far greater than what I knew was possible for us at 1, 2, 3 years of marriage.
Breaking down the “Monumental Marriage”
A Monumental Marriage starts with a solid foundation of trust, mutual respect, and honest communication, this enables genuine playfulness. When I think about the earliest days of our relationship, I kept a lot bottled up — both good (things like expressing how much I adored him) and bad (like how certain things he did or didn’t do hurt me). When I matured enough to use my words to thoughtfully communicate my needs and desires, I noticed a monumental shift in my own happiness and the quality of our relationship. This laid the foundation for mutual trust, respect and honesty which has grown considerably with time. With that foundation strong, we’ve been able to arrive at a place where our life together is genuinely playful… and that has made our daily life and marriage a lot more fun.
A Monumental Marriage requires you to be intentional about how you express your love through little things and big things. A little thing I do — Every single morning I bring Ronnie coffee in bed and wake him up with a big wet kiss on the cheek. Did Ronnie ever ask for this? Nope. But I’ve been doing it now for 3+ years and I know it means a lot to him to start his day with a delish iced coffee made just how he likes it and a smooch from his lady. One small act, compounded daily, over many years = a mountain of love for my man. A big thing I recently forced us to do — warning, this isn’t sexy at all. I recently forced us to complete the process of putting together an Estate Plan ahead of the birth of our daughter. This included getting all of our accounts and assets in order, talking through our wishes in the event of one of our deaths or a catastrophic event that takes out both of us: how our assets would be distributed, who would carry out our last wishes on our behalf, who would take care of our daughter until she was grown. Not a sexy thing to do, but this process actually brought us closer together, forcing us to reckon with our mortality, reminding us how precious life is, and forcing us to collaborate around a plan for our daughter in the event of a worst case scenario. Expressing love takes many shapes and forms as your partnership grows and deepens, embracing that and to me, a Monumental Marriage means there’s as much love in a big splurge as there is in all the other way less sexy things that life demands of a partnership.
A Monumental Marriage is what YOU make of it. I started therapy this year for the first time. One of the goals I had for my therapy was to address some trauma from when I was a little kid, in preparation for motherhood. In one of my conversations with my therapist, we were talking about what my parents modeled for me growing up and what I wanted to model to my daughter as she grew up. I learned this: children of parents who were intentional about making one another their priority, actually grew up more well-adjusted and had healthier, less co-dependent relationships in adulthood. I have no study to reference, and it’s possible that my therapist was blowing smoke up my a**. But, assuming what she said was truthful, I decided then and there that in working towards a Monumental Marriage of my own, my priorities had to be in this exact order: 1) my own mental and physical health and well-being, 2) pouring into my marriage and, 3) pouring into our daughter. Not only because this order of priorities is what’s best for my daughter, but actually because it’s what’s best for my marriage and ultimately what’s best for me… funny how that works, huh? When you make time to be your best, you create space to be your best in your marriage, and in my opinion, a strong marriage is an incredible foundation on which to raise a child… but again, that all starts with YOU and what YOU are making of it all.
At the end of the day, all loves are different, and I love, love, period. I hope you’ll take what you like from this, and leave behind that which doesn’t serve you. Xo.
