Building the Good Life

Lifestyle Blog VII

marriage • culture • theology • music • food • travel • home

Any one else married out there? In a committed relationship? Dating? Relationships are beautiful configurations, but anyone can tell you that they take work, willingness, trust, risk…and many more things.

Frederick (Husband) and I met in a wildly romantic, spontaneous, exciting way (at least that is what people say). A coffeeshop in England. Tentative friendship over shared hobbies. Feelings of closeness as hobbies turned to shared passions, to connection, to heart. Love grew slowly, determinedly. We were both resistant in our own ways, but something kept bringing us back to each other, even as he moved to America and I stayed in Oxford. Long-distance love manifested a whole new set of excitements and struggles. We began to own our love, fight for it, pursue each other. Make hard choices in life to be together. Sacrifice locations, jobs…but gain committed love and a life of dreaming. I moved to Los Angeles — we were finally together. This dating/engagement season was harder than we thought. Sometimes we missed how we were in long distance. Most of the time we realized we were lucky to be in the same city. Anticipation grew, we just wanted to live life together already. And then we took the leap and got married!

Marriage is a crazy ballgame (what does that even mean, ha). Our entire pre-marriage relationship was one of travel, adventure, energy, chasing after one another…“honeymooning” in its own way. Then reality happened to hit pretty early for us — came back from our real honeymoon (ITALY!!) to strapped finances, unemployment, limitations, living together, unresolved expectations about how we wanted life to be. Especially now that we were married and the hard part — reaching the point of getting married — was seemingly over.

We individually went through subtle changes during this challenging first year of marriage. We met each other when we were thriving, flourishing, in the midst of young love, new dreams, endless possibilities. Now we were learning each other in a completely different season, and seeing our respective spouse with slightly tired, but still determined, eyes. Is this the same person I met in that English coffeeshop, back in 2015?

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