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Last week, KC and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. And I’ve been thinking a lot about it… It feels surreal that it’s been that long. We’ve known each other more than half our lives at this point! Anyone who sees us now would probably think we have always had a great marriage. What they don’t see are all the years that came before… The stressful years. The exhausted years. The years when we were raising little kids and barely had enough energy to have a conversation, much less invest in our marriage. The years when we didn’t understand each other. The years when we wondered why something that is supposed to feel so good felt so hard. KC and I had all of those. We dated for five years before we got married, broke up three times, called off an engagement, and went to counseling before we ever said “I do.” So we were not exactly the poster couple for “love is all you need.” 😂 And then marriage brought all the normal real-life stuff with it - kids, work, travel, stress, exhaustion, different personalities, different needs, different ways of handling conflict. There were years when I was really unhappy and genuinely wondered if we were really going to make it. I think KC would tell you the same. And now, 25 years later, I can honestly say that my marriage is one of the greatest gifts in my life. If you asked me, “What’s the secret to a good marriage?” I’d say there really isn’t one. You just keep showing up. You keep trying. You keep working at it. And - it won’t be easy. And I think that is the part I most want people to hear. Whether we were taught this or just absorbed the idea somewhere along the way, a lot of us believe that if we are with the “right” person, the relationship should feel easy. And then when it doesn’t, we start to panic… Maybe we chose wrong. Maybe we’re too different. Maybe a good marriage isn’t supposed to require this much effort. And I just don’t believe that. Hard does not automatically mean bad, or unhealthy, or that you’re married to the wrong person. Sometimes hard just means two people are learning how to do life together. KC and I have amazing parents, and we learned so much from them. But you know what we didn’t learn? How to have a healthy marriage. Both of our parents were divorced by the time we were teenagers. My mom had been divorced twice by then. So when we started counseling before we were even married, the people around us were not exactly optimistic that our relationship would last (and I don’t blame them!). But what looked messy from the outside was actually the work we needed to do. We were learning how to communicate. How to repair after a fight. How to love somebody who is very different from you. How to work together instead of against each other. And thank the good Lord we did! (And PS… We are STILL learning. These are skills that take practice and they keep evolving as you both grow and change.) One of the things I am most grateful for about KC is that even in the hardest of times, he was willing to work on the relationship with me. If I said, “We need help,” he was willing to get help. Whether it was counseling, a class, a book or a hard conversation… he would do it. He was willing to fight for us and our marriage and the family we had created. I’ve often thought that if he had ever looked at me in those harder years and said, “I’m fine. This is your problem. You fix it,” I don’t think we would be celebrating 25 years together. So if your relationship feels harder than you expected right now, I want to leave you with a few things to think about before you decide that “hard” means something is terribly wrong. Ask yourself: Are we in a hard season - or has this truly become our normal? Sometimes little kids, job stress, financial pressure, health issues, grief, or caring for aging parents can put enormous pressure on a relationship. Are we both willing to work on it? You do not have to have all the answers. But you do have to be willing dig in and figure it out. And finally: Do we need some help instead of continuing to have the exact same arguments over and over? Getting help is not failure. Sometimes it is the exact reason a relationship survives long enough to become something really beautiful. Speaking from experience here! 🙋🏻♀️ And if things are actually good in your relationship right now? Protect that. Don’t wait until there is a crisis. Ask each other: What are we doing well that we don’t want to lose? And: Where have we gotten a little lazy? Then pick one thing this week and give it some attention. Maybe it is going on a date. Maybe it is putting your phones away at night and actually talking. Maybe it is touching more. Or simply asking, “How are we doing?” Relationships need maintenance just like everything else we care about. And anything worth having is worth working for! This week’s podcast/YouTube episode is a really personal one for me. I’m using my 25 years of marriage and coaching experience to bust 7 of the most common marriage myths - including why hard doesn’t mean wrong, why recurring problems don’t necessarily mean you’re incompatible, why one person can change a relationship but can’t carry it all alone, and why being together a long time does not mean, “This is just how it is.” If your relationship is in a hard season (or even if it’s in a great one!), I think this episode will give you a lot to think about. You can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch the full episode on YouTube by clicking on the links below:
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