6 Lessons We’ve Learned in 12 Years of Marriage

“Hey!! Daddy stop scoochin’ mommy!!” Our 3 year old pulled on our pant legs as she tried to wedge herself between us while we stood in the kitchen kissing one evening when Jer got home from work. Somehow “scoochin'” has become the term for mommy and daddy kissing in our house and it cracks me up every time.

Jer and I have been married for 12 years on September 20th, and I am so thankful to say that we are in the best place our marriage has ever been. We’re proud of our relationship because we’ve worked really hard to get to this place.

I know some of you have probably been married much longer than us, gone through struggles much deeper than ours, and maybe worked and fought a lot harder for your marriage than we have, and for that I want to acknowledge and applaud you. I believe that fighting for our marriages is some of the most important work we can do.

So I wanted to take this chance to honor our marriage and share what we have learned on the way to getting to this place. Because for us, it hasn’t always been this way.

Several years ago if you would have asked me if we had a good marriage, I would not have had to think twice before answering, “No.” We have struggled and gone through very dry seasons in our marriage and intensely hard seasons of life. There were several months in our 7th year of marriage where we were literally digging our nails in and barely hanging on.

The #1 thing we have learned through all of this is that having a great marriage does not just happen on it’s own. It’s not easy, it doesn’t come naturally, it takes work. Lots and lots of hard work. And lots of grace. Grace upon grace, upon grace.

Marriage is hard. Really, really hard sometimes. There is no way around it. But something Jer and I have said to each other from the very beginning of our relationship is, “This is worth it.” Always, always worth it! Here are the lessons we’ve learned in marriage along the way.

Thoughts on 12 Years of Marriage

We’re not Soul Mates

I say we’re not soul mates in the sense that we are not so perfectly matched and meant to be together that marriage is like a walk in the park. Are we soul mates because we have done the hard work of twelve years of marriage? Absolutely. There is no one else who knows me and loves me the way Jer does. There is no one else I would rather walk with in life and fight together with for our marriage and our family.

But if we think there is somehow one perfect person who will always be easy to love and connect with and stay with for the rest of our lives, then we are mostly likely going to end up disappointed and disillusioned with marriage. We could maybe even believe that we had made the wrong choice and married the “wrong” person.

So for us, I think we had to acknowledge we’re not “perfect” for each other as a part of our healing and restoration. And when we accept there is no one perfect spouse, we can accept and embrace that the right person for us is the person standing before us, the person we chose to marry.

Marriage is a choice, and one we have to continue committing to every single day. Some days it’s easy to make that choice all over again. Other days, not so much. But our perspective changes when we view it as a choice and not as some kind of destiny we may have messed up on.

We Recognize Life Goes On

Fights and disagreements and misunderstanding and hurt feelings are an inevitable part of marriage. And while we have learned over the years how to fight well and how to communicate more effectively in the midst of a disagreement, we also recognize that life goes on. We’ve learned to be able to co-parent, sharing responsibilities of getting our kids ready for school in the morning, car-pooling them to and from school and activities, and take care of household stuff like meals and cleaning, even when we’re “mad” at each other.

We both know that whatever the issue is that we need to work through, it is not the end of the world, or the end of our marriage. We are stronger than that – we are committed, we are not going anywhere, and life goes on. We can still be kind and respectful and even loving to each other in the midst of issues or disagreements.

Of course, on the flip side, we don’t just want to keep going though the motions of life without ever tackling the issues and working through them. That’s not healthy! We must get back to the issue or disagreement and work through it together, but in the mean time, we are still partners and can act like civilized adults with each other. And as a kind of extra bonus, at the same time we are also modeling good conflict resolution and communication skills to our kids.

We are Equal Partners

This shift in our relationship has happened just within the last two years and it has made such a huge and lasting impact on us that I couldn’t leave it out of a post about the things we have learned in our twelve years of marriage. But it is a long story, and I started to write it all out and then decided that now was not the time, that I’m not sure I’m ready to share that part of our story yet.

To put it simply, there was a season in our marriage where we tried to approach our relationship from the view of male headship and female submission because we thought that’s what a “good” Christian marriage was supposed to be. The results were disastrous.

Neither of us could live up to the “supposed to’s” of that view of marriage. And our relationship strained and buckled under the weight of expectations that neither of us were supposed to carry on our own.

As a part of my own personal growth and healing in other areas of my life, about two years ago I read books like Jesus Feminist, Half the Church, and A Year of Biblical Womanhood, among other things. Realizing how destructive the headship/submission model had been to our relationship, I went to Jer and asked him if it would take anything away from him if I no longer held him up as the leader of our marriage and relationship, but if instead I came alongside him as a equal partner. “No,” he replied, “not at all. In fact, if you do that, you will actually lift that burden from my shoulders and give me freedom in not having to carry it alone.”

It has been amazing to watch how both our marriage and each of us individually have grown, become stronger, and flourished within our renewed commitment to equal partnership and mutual submission. Each of us submits to each other and to Jesus as He leads our marriage and our family. And now we can’t imagine it any other way.

We Kiss Often

As the story at the beginning of this posts suggests, Jer and I are often affectionate with each other, enough so that our kids have coined their own term for mommy and daddy kissing. We’re okay with this, in fact we think it’s a good thing.

We want our kids to see us kissing and being affectionate so they know that mommy and daddy love each other and because we want to show and teach them what real love looks like in real life. We do not want them to get their only message about love and relationships from music, movies, friends, and the culture around them.

Before either of us leaves in the morning, when Jer gets home from work in the evening, and every opportunity in between, we are intentional about kissing and showing each other and our kids the love we have for one another. And, if that wasn’t enough, kissing more often leads to…

We Make Intimacy a Priority

At the risk of embarrassing myself, I will talk about this one too, because I think it’s so important. To me, there are no hard and fast rules about how often a husband and wife should be intimate. Some people say at least once a month and some say no less than three times a week. But you know what? No one is counting, and you probably shouldn’t be either. You know when it’s enough, and you know when it’s not enough. If you don’t know when it’s not enough, your relationship will tell you.

Struggling to connect? Miscommunicating more often than usual? Fighting about small or silly things? How long has it been since you connected in the bedroom? If it’s been a while, you might need to look at that as an underlying cause, and make some adult time a priority.

So here’s the potentially embarrassing part, I want to share something with you that has made the biggest difference in our physical intimacy. Our Casper mattress. You guys. In addition to being non-toxic and affordable, super comfortable and the best night’s sleep I’ve had since before kids, this mattress is great for sex. There I said it.

I joked with Jer one evening saying, “If people are having a hard time in their marriage, maybe they don’t need counseling, they just need to get this bed!”  Now, I was a psychology major in college, so I’m definitely not saying that good marriage therapy is not a super important part of healing and restoring a broken marriage, my point was more that the bed is really that great. {blush}

We Work Hard

We’ve already mentioned this, but I think it’s worth it to say it again. Marriage is HARD! Having a good marriage is not about finding your soul mate, or the exact right person you’re supposed to marry, or being sooooooooooo in love, because none of those things will carry you through the dark and hard times of your marriage on their own.

Having a good marriage takes lots and lots and lots of hard work. There is no way around it. You can’t skip out on this part. And so the most important thing we’ve learned in twelve years that we could share as advice is this: work hard on your marriage.

You will struggle and you will go through hard, sometimes devastating, times. Marriage is not a fairy tale. But, having a good marriage because we hung on and worked really, really hard to overcome the struggles and brokenness? That is a dream come true!

I’d love to hear from you, how long have you been married and what is one of the most important lessons you have learned through your marriage?

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