The Normal Marriage

I look at you sleeping next to me.

Sometimes we are too worn out to talk at the end of the day. I turn on Game of Thrones until your breathing grows heavy. I wiggle next to you and try to startle you awake because I want to see what happens next, but that only buys me a few minutes. Sometimes I finish the episode by myself, but I don’t like that as much.

You are so tired. I am too, but my mind races at night. My tired turns into stress and overthinking and throwing the blankets off and pulling them back on. Yours turns into snoring.

We’ve been doing this now for a long time now.

In the morning we’ll wake up to coffee, and kids, and stumbling around the kitchen.

I love our life.

Sometimes our dreams play along together in perfect rhythmic harmony. Other times when we talk about the future, my Heaven sounds like your Hell, and my Hell sounds like your Heaven. We circle around the same ideas over and over until one of us (you) gets tired of talking about it. I would beat that idea into a pulp if you let me, but you remind me that you have to go to work.

So I text you about it instead.

Which you probably love, but forget to tell me.

This morning we had a talk like that. We were talking about dreams that didn’t match yet. I want to do this; you want to do that.

You put your arm around me and we let it be.

The thing I was thinking in that moment was this…

I don’t want anything more than I want to do life with you.

There’s no dream that gets me so excited that I’d want it without you in it.

There isn’t any goal that could sweep me into such whimsey that I could forget the person I want to do it with.

We’ve been doing life together for twelve years. We’ve had four babies, lived in seven houses, owned three businesses, been on thirty airplanes, and gone on countless adventures. We’ve been scared together, sad together, mad together, and so excited we were giddy.

The days are so normal sometimes, but maybe that’s the romance. The romance is the waking up, the pushing through, the “handling it” together. The romance is that we don’t ever stop being the best of friends. The romance is trying our best not to assume that the other one is just an asshole (even though sometimes they are). The romance is the choosing each other every day even when the days are long and hard. The romance is the celebrating together when the days are good and full.

I love you forever and for always and I’ll never stop.

For more like this you can follow me here on Wonderoak, like my page on Facebook, and follow @wonderoakblog on Instagram! Photo credit belongs to thisisnick.com.

7 responses to “The Normal Marriage”

  1. So wonderful Jess!! You articulate what the majority of us can only try to stutter.

  2. Oh so true! I love, love this..you spoke my story! Thank you!

  3. Thank you so much… I totally relate to this! 🙂

  4. Totally awesome, Jess! Love that line near the end… “trying our best not to assume the other is an asshole”. Marriage, in it’s simplest form is two people annoying the hell out of each other because they love each other so much 🙂 Thanks for the insight and the giggles 🙂

  5. Haha yes, I also love the “not assuming the other is an asshole!” Literally the best marriage advice.

  6. You are so gifted in your insight in life. Loved your marriage blog about doing life together. After 46 yrs I still love Van and I doing just that good times, uncertain ones and difficult times!

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