Marriage...one year in

So it's been a whole year since we took those sacred vows, made our families cry, and dressed up like princesses and penguins for a day of overly priced luxuries and dancing.  To me though, it doesn't feel like much "mentally" has changed.  As a matter of fact, I'd probably forget I was even married at all if it weren't for this annoying wedding band that keeps endlessly turning around my finger.  Sometimes our wedding day just feels like some fantastic party we attended, where we somehow made out with some pretty expensive parting gifts.

And I believe I feel this way because today, even a whole year after we took those vows, we are both the same people, feeling the same amount of love towards each other that we did before we said I do.  Marriage hasn't changed our relationship one bit.  There wasn't a honeymoon period or the shock of facing reality.  We just kept on going the same way we have for nearly nine years like nothing ever happened.

I guess the way we are is just a side effect of being together for so damn long.  I mean, the longer two people are together, the more time there is to see the very worst side of the person you're in love with.  And if that worst side is bearable enough, you simply stay together.  Those couples who are together just a short period of time before marriage though, tend to go through phases of love and hate at a more destructive pace,  stumbling onto those unexpected relationship realities with ignorant eyes and naive hearts.

One of the best things I've learned about marriage was at a religious seminar I was forced into going to by the priest who married us.  It was a six hour course on the pros and cons of being married.  I couldn't tell you half of what I learned that day, but the one thing that stuck with me was this:  A relationship is an endless circle of love and hate that keeps turning around and around day in and day out. (kind of like my ring).  Some days we may be in love up to our ears, while the next day we could be swearing and screaming bloody murder at the top of our lungs.  While the next day we could feel an utter appreciation for each other.  It might sound like common sense but in hearing this, I soon realized that I'm not always going to feel love for my husband at every moment of every day, and that is perfectly alright.

As some close to me know, the history of my husband and I getting together was more of a zigzag then a straight line.  Fate seemed against our relationship in the beginning, but soon the clouds parted, the sun came out, and it began to rain.  But that rain was the sweetest rain I had ever tasted.