the beat goes on...

Me and Mr. Blueberry Pancakes are coming up on a DECADE of being married. To state the obvious, time flies, and I'm sure you feel the same if you were at that wedding, laughing, drinking mojitos, and crowding the dance floor with us that day. It certainly doesn't feel as if it was ten whole years ago. 

Like every newlywed couple, ever, we got tons of "how to make it work" advice. What I didn't realize at the time was that 1) every bit of that advice was 100% true and 2) that we would indeed NEED IT at some point. Because, yes, though wedded bliss is generally Wedded Bliss, there are times it's not - that advice would come in really handy when things got tough. 

One of the oddest comments someone made was that "you turn into your spouse." This isn't so much advice, as it is prepping you for the inevitable. You know that thing your future spouse does that is just completely ridiculous? You're going to do it, too, at some point. And with any luck, you will die laughing when you realize that you now carry a toothbrush in the side pocket of your car door, PLUS a spare in the passenger door, just in case. Now I've never gotten to the point where I *use* that toothbrush in the car, but after so many road trips and ski days feeling the need to brush my teeth, it sure is nice to have it to bring into the gas station with me. Yup, you turn into your spouse!

But I digress (because in a decade, or four, some things will never change). Here are some of the points of advice that I had to heed, or was grateful to heed, one way or another over these past ten years.

- Never take your spouse for granted and thank them as much as you can. 

- Make time to enjoy each other, and each other only. Be alone together doing something you both love. 

- Don't keep score. Once you do that, you've already lost. 

- Marriage is like a farm - you have to work at it every day, there are always things to do. Some of the things you like, others you may not like, but you have to do all the chores if you want to reap a good harvest. It's worth the effort. 

- Your spouse is your partner and the point is to advance the partnership toward common goals. Sometimes you will support your spouse more and sometimes they will support you more, but you're both in it to move the partnership toward what you both want out of life. 

- Your spouse will grow and change, and so will you. You're not beholden to the person (or to REMAIN the person) that showed up to the church at 3PM that Saturday in 2011, both of you will change. The important thing is that you grow together, so if you feel like that's not happening, check in with each other immediately, don't hope things will change on their own. Make it a point to grow together.

- You have to learn how to fight with each other. Disagreements will happen and you can love someone more than anything, but if fighting with them turns you or them into a terrible kind of person you don't want to be, you need to figure that out (and a counselor will get you there a lot faster than you can get there on your own). 

- Marriage is a mirror which forces you to face your flaws. You have to deal with those flaws to become a better human. Don't blame the mirror, and don't beat up the person reflected (you) when you see the flaws. Just figure out how to be better. (Again, counselors help IMMENSELY with this.)

- When things get hard, seek help. If your spouse decides to do a half ironman while starting a new job, and your job won't let you keep up the house and the lawn while they take that on, hire a housekeeper and a lawn service and move on. You're not a bad spouse for it. 

- When things get REALLY hard, you will need outside counsel, and you really don't want that to be in the form of a divorce lawyer. When you and your spouse can't seem to get on the same page about anything without one or both of you ending up in tears, get outside help. Whether it's a counselor or therapist, clergy, a trusted elder... you're going to need SOMEONE who can help you learn to communicate with each other. It doesn't matter how compatible you are, every couple has some element of discord and misunderstanding, and outsiders who have your best interests as a couple at heart can really help you get through that and work better together. 

- If you need to vent about your spouse or bounce off how to handle a tricky situation with your spouse before actually doing it, talk to their family, not yours. Their family is generally beholden to them and loves them unconditionally, whereas your family sees them as a potential threat to your happiness. Plus, it's likely their family has been dealing with the same issue in their own relationship to your spouse, and can give you helpful tips on what worked and what didn't. 

And here's my favorite:

- Never be crazy at the same time. Whoever is currently crazy gets to ride out being crazy, and the other one has to stay calm and let them get back to normal, before they turn crazy themselves. Trust me, this one may have saved our marriage many times. Notice they are currently crazy. Step back and let them ride it out, don't you dare get in there and be crazy, too. Mr. Blueberry Pancakes is very, very good at this. So am I, but he has to do it way more often than I do! We're both conscious of this and if I had to say there is one tacit rule we follow, it's this one. Hence, we're still together :)

Being married is generally awesome, especially if it's to someone as wonderful as Mr. Blueberry Pancakes. It really is a blessing to have someone to go through the ups and downs of life with. But just because it's mostly fun doesn't mean it's not also difficult, at times. Looking back at the last ten years there's so much more good than bad, and all the good still glitters and shines while the bad just fades away. My intent over the next week is to share some of that glitter and tell some of the great stories of the past ten years, but on the other hand, I might just save all that for The Book. 

What I can say for certain about marriage is that you get back tenfold what you put into it. And similarly, you get punished at least tenfold for what you ignore or don't tend to. So, choose wisely. ;) And happy TEN YEARS to us - la dee da dee dee, la dee da dee da...