Alive.

How do you keep your marriage going and alive?

A marriage requires not only love.  I love Papa J but many times, I find myself wanting to slit his throat and roar at him. 

Marriage is about compromising, respect, trust, love, honesty and many other more factors.  When I got married, besides being congratulated to, I was very often told to "Be a good wife."

Frankly speaking, after the 748397th person who told me that, I really was annoyed.  What in the world does that mean?  Nobody went up to Papa J and told him to "Be a good husband."  You mean the wives are supposed to be "good" and the husbands can remain to be the same or change for the worst?

I don't think so.  Not to me at least.

A relationship takes two hands to clap.  In my circle of life, the women in my life are often caught with a louder voice, stronger character and really, more decisive.  I am brought up to speak my mind, stand up for myself and the people around me and do only things that I agree upon.  I am not taught to be submissive to my husband, follow blindly and be a mouse - I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of woman Papa J fell in love with anyway.  He always jokes that it is a natural reflex to say NO to everything he says. 

Haha, it became a habit.  Bad habit. 

You know, a relationship becomes stale without drama.  What is love without tragedy?

I'm a sucker for the blow up romance, heart thumping scenario and absolutely unrealistic kind of love.  I had to fall in love with the most down to earth guy in the world. 

Now that's fine by me.  I've grown out of my fairy tales and happily ever after ever since I was made to be draped in nightgowns filthily stained with milk, the center of my universe now demanded by an infant.

BUT.

There's always a BUT.

But, I am still a woman!  I still want my flowers and hearts.  Ok I lied, I hate flowers.  They're such a waste of money and I don't know how to appreciate them.  But I want my surprises and cheesy sweet talks.  I want to remember us being teenagers and crazily in love.  We need to remember, sometimes.

It's so easy to slip into a life plastered with reality so we had a "Talk".  Yeah, the talk.

We decided that we would routinely manage a Date Night once a week and spend quality family time with every spare time we can squeeze out of our busy schedules.  It is quite sad.  We barely have anymore time left together since work and studying came into the picture.  How do you guys juggle?!

If 12 hours is dedicated to work, 8 hours to sleep, 1 hour for dinner, 1 hour to shower and "alone" time, 1 hour to prepare for work/journey, if we are lucky, we only have 1 hour left for each other.  And that is if sleep deprived me is still awake.

Yes, AJ is still waking up for night feeds so I make it a point to crash early or I'd suffer the following day and with school and driving packing my days, I don't want to take that risk.  I haven't slept 8 hours straight ever since she was born so that makes 6 months.

So back to the Talk.  We decided that despite our lack of time together, we have to make additional effort to make our lives as interesting as it could get, with an infant in tow outside of our demanded workload.  Also, I have to make an effort to stay up later to spend time with the Papa.  So far so good.

Outside of the effort of work (which most of us are only putting in time because of money), I realised you also have to put in effort for a relationship to work, effort for your child to love and respect you - (that needs nothing but time and love), effort to maintain friendships/family ties, effort to keep your body fit and effort to remain sane by enough "alone" time.

Life sounds so tiring this way doesn't it.

Sometimes it is.  Sometimes all I wanna do is scream "FUCK GROWING UP" and throw my white towel in the air.  But I can't.  Well, not anymore.  So I suck it in and grow up.  I'm usually fine after I get my nap. Haha!

I guess it's only easy if you know the key word - Balance.

Comments

Popular Posts