Last year, I had the pleasure of going to a fantastic engagement party for a wonderful couple. As is probably customary with engagement parties (not sure, as that was my first), many family members took to the microphone to give the newly engaged couple advice. While looking at the bliss in the couple’s eyes throughout the night, I kept thinking, Please hold on to that. Don’t let anyone take it away from you.
Early the next morning they were on my mind, so I sent them a note sharing the best advice Keith and I have received since getting married almost ten years ago. It has carried us through every day of our marriage, and what an awesome marriage this has been and continues to be!
I recently received an e-mail from Kristi, a new member to the club:
I wanted to let you know how encouraging your website is! I am a newlywed who has been married for a month, and it has been the best month of my life. I absolutely love marriage and my husband, and I know it will continue to get better with time. I am amazed by the number of women at work and in other places who have told me how difficult marriage is and how “the first year is the worst.” I am determined to remain a happy wife and to avoid falling into the trap of negativity towards my husband. Thank you for showing me I am not alone!
This note articulated exactly how I felt the first few years of my marriage. Not long after Keith and I first said, “I do,” we were confronted by negative comments about marriage everywhere we turned. I was dumbfounded by the number of friends, family members, and casual acquaintances who commented on how difficult marriage is and how once the “honeymoon phase” ends, we would need to face the realities of marriage. We heard about everything from the “first-year blues” to the “seven-year itch.” It was incredibly rare to hear someone speak encouraging words to us about lifelong love and marriage. It was even rarer to hear the words happiness and marriage used in the same sentence. But there was at least one time I can remember, and that conversation has remained with me for all our married years.
A few months after we were married, Keith and I were at a couples retreat hosted by my parents. After one of the sessions, we were riding in the crowded elevator back to our hotel room. As usual, Keith’s arms were wrapped around my shoulders and my head was buried in his chest. One of the women on the elevator ride, observing our affection, began doing what so many had done before her: “Hold on to that. It won’t last long—”
But before she could even finish her less-than-positive statement, a friend of my parents added her two cents: “Happiness is a choice. My husband and I have been married twenty-nine years, and we have chosen to be happy. Every morning when we wake up, we choose to enjoy our day with each other. We choose to be happy.” With that, she looked Keith and me square in the eyes and said, “Choose to be happy together and it will last.”
Her words were heaven sent. They were like pouring rain on the Mohave Desert. They gave us hope, in spite of all the pessimistic comments so often heard, that there were those who still believed in the power of marriage and in enjoying life as a couple until “death do us part.” We determined that day that despite the negative connotations associated with marriage, we would choose to be happy and to enjoy every moment of our life together. It is a choice. We made that choice, and we continue to make it each and every day.
What you and I consider happiness may vary greatly. But what we have in common is we both know what happiness means to us. One of my greatest hopes for this book is that a person like you, in his or her first few years of marriage, would read it and know it is possible to define your own marital destiny. You can’t determine how long your spouse will live (if any of us could do that, we’d make a fortune for sure), but you can decide from the very beginning that “till death do us part” will not be a simple cliché in your marriage but rather one of its mantras. And you can also decide that “happily married” will not be something fleeting after your initial years of marriage, but a phrase that will describe you fifty years from now.
If you are anything like me, and every one of my girlfriends, people have given you some pretty horrendous marriage advice. Please don’t listen to them. You have the power and the right to make your marriage beautiful, and anyone who tells you otherwise, well, just kindly smile and think about all the couples in this book. Think about all the women we met along this journey (all who seem to have discovered the fountain of youth) and the beautiful words they spoke into our lives. Choose happiness, my friend, every day. Choose your spouse every day. And make the choice to create the life—and marriage—of your dreams.