When I'm telling the tale of that time, it's mostly awfulness and bad behavior from The Man. It's hard to see why I'd stay. While the stories that I tell are true, they are anchored in a time of great pain for me, and as such they are skewed (a bit) toward the negative. That doesn't make them any less my truth.
Here are some other truths:
When you get married at 23 and 24, you may not have the best idea of what it means to be in a life-long relationship. It may take a few years for both of you to figure out how that works and how to work toward it.
We married for love. We married because we are compatible. Not a bad way to start your journey.
We learned along the way that marriage is hard work. Puttering along on cruise control is not how you make it long term, but when love is still there, cruise control might be able to tide you over until you can put in the work.
We are actually still in love. Through all of the hurt and harsh words and anger, we never stopped loving each other. We weren't able to say it for a while. We couldn't see how that was going to be enough. It wasn't enough, but it was there.
We have an almost 18 year history of friendship, intimacy, shared memories and joint property. That is also not enough to carry you through an entire marriage, but it goes a long way toward reminding you of what's important when you hit the rough spots.
We still make each other laugh - a lot.
We enjoy talking to each other. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but as the years pass, you do a LOT of talking. If nobody's paying attention, you're screwed.
My heart still leaps when he walks in the door. His smile makes me dizzy. He smiles a lot lately :-)
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