Five Years

Whit and I have been married for five years. That seems so crazy to me! That’s such a good chunk of time. It seems short, when thinking about all the people who have been married for 10, 20, 30 years. But when we celebrated our second anniversary I felt so much older and more experienced than newlyweds.

We have now been married for a year longer than the length of time we dated for (almost four years). I felt like we dated forever… it did seem to span a lot of time, because we were young and growing up a lot and a lot of things were happening during that time (most of my college experience, a year living in another country, moving, making big life decisions). I will NEVER forget how it was to be dating and think, oh my gosh, one day we’ll probably be married – what will that be like?? What will it be like to not worry about physical boundaries, to be completely committed to each other, to live together…

Of course once you’re married you don’t think about most of those things so much. The biggest change for me was how Whit seems like a totally different new and better version of himself now that I know him as my husband. I’m sure in some ways he’s changed, but mostly I just know him more deeply and get to see all the bright shining parts of him so much more clearly.

The weirdest thing is feeling as if you are one person…. in the way that sometimes I don’t recognize that he is a separate person from me. Does anyone else experience that? I sometimes feel lonely – wanting to share my life and thoughts with someone else – even though he is right there. But it’s kind of like talking to my mom… I don’t feel like she’s a different person enough – I kind of already know how she’s going to respond. Does that make any sense?

It’s certainly easy to just act like really great roommates. Whit and I are very blessed to get along extremely well. We share a lot of the same interests and process life in a similar way, and rarely have things to disagree over (less so now that we’ve learned to argue better too). But I kind of miss that intentionality of when we were dating. There’s certainly no way it could have continued forever; we were simply too focused on each other, and we’re both much too introverted to sustain that for a long time. But it was so fun to sit at the computer together and look at random things; if Whit found a new game, he would show me and I would learn to play it too; we watched the movie the other person wanted to see because we would rather be together than by ourselves.

Now we are relishing our own space. It’s less being married and more that post-college chaos of always doing tons of things at once. If Whit watches a funny video on Youtube, I don’t have to watch it with him. I can sit down on the couch and watch an episode of Melissa & Joey while he plays video games on the computer. I’ll go shopping while he works on fixing things around the house. It’s really nice to be able to pursue our own interests, and then come together when we want. It does take effort though, actually more effort than it did while dating, because the other person is there, but you have to be intentional with them.

Anyways, I know it’s not about being happy, but I really am so happy to get to be together with Whit! I don’t say these things as much as I should, but I notice myself attached at his hip when we are around a lot of new people, I listen to his stories intently, so proud and intrigued, I truly think he’s amazing at his job and no one could do it better than he does. I admire him. I also feel so extremely loved by him, my cup is overflowing to the point that I would need to dump it many, many times before it ever felt the slightest bit empty. I just am not worried in the least about any hint or shadow of doubt that he doesn’t love me completely in every way. I know he does. God is good to us, even though we don’t pray together or study the Bible together like we should. Whit prays for me each morning, and I try to remember to pray for him but often forget (if there’s one thing I pray for it should be for him). I poke fun at him, and I give him a hard time for things that don’t really matter, just because I can. But God gives us forgiveness, and teaches us grace through each other. And I’m so thankful for that!