6 Things No One Tells You About Marriage I Had to Learn on my Own

Your feelings about your spouse will change all of the time. 

Even though you love your spouse every day, how connected you feel can ebb and flow. You will have days where you don’t necessarily wake up beaming with love, you will have other days where you are head over heels and a lot of days in the middle. It’s important to remember not to do or say things on your temporary less-than-loving days that can permanently damage your relationship.

 

Your spouse will change, but you can’t change him. 

Living, breathing beings are meant to change and grow daily. Your spouse isn’t going to be the same person in 10 years that he is today. On the flip side, your spouse is the only one who can decide what he is going to change. Going into the marriage thinking you’re about to change him makes no sense, nor does thinking that he will always stay the same. You have to learn to accept your spouse as he is, and be willing to re-learn him as he grows.

 

Kids completely change your marriage.

To be fair, people talk about this, but you never quite know how much until it happens or how much each kid changes your marriage even more. With a broad view, these are good changes: after all, there’s nothing like a real-life combination of the two of you to remind you of how powerful love can be. Still, that lesson is hard to remember in the day-to-day. Walking that balance between knowing each other as husband and wife vs. mom and dad can be hard, but well worth it.

 

You can get better at marriage over time. 

People often talk the “honeymoon phase,” and how it’s all downhill from there. But done right, your marriage can get better year by year. So much emphasis is put on those initial enamored feelings that we lose sight of the friendship that grows and deepens over time. Like most things in life, few things trump experience. Learning your spouse inside and out makes it easier to meet his or her needs over time.

 

Working on yourself as an individual is even more important than working on the marriage. 

Before marriage, I had a tendency to talk about my husband-to-be like a matching LEGO piece; someone who could come in and fill in whatever I was missing. Reality: No one, not even your spouse, can meet every single one of your needs. Learning how to be fulfilled as an individual instead of looking for it from your spouse is one of the most important things you can do for your marriage.

 

The same old stuff can still be exciting.

So much of marriage advice focuses on how to change it up and spice it up, which is important. But often the same old things that you fell in love with are the things that you stay in love with. More than 10 years after we met, I still feel excited when my husband’s number pops up on my phone. I’m still unreasonably happy when he sees something that I might like to eat and brings it home. It’s even further proof that he knows me, and loves me even better than he did on day one.