And they lived happily ever after…
Tips from a 10-year marriage.
Description: This is one of our engagement photos. The Sailor is dressed like a Canadian logger kissing his fiance, me. I'm dressed up like a Dutch woman complete with yellow clogs. We are kissing along the dike on a fence.
When I was a teenager, I got it into my head that I really wanted to be alive and able to celebrate a 50th anniversary with my husband, so that would mean that I needed to meet him before I was 20. I have an Aunt who met her husband as a teenager and he was the love of her life. I really wanted to be a married my high school sweetheart and then lived happily ever after person. Being a teenage Christian probably didn’t help with that idea.
During this time, I would ask older married couples,
“How did you know your spouse was The One?”
They often replied,
"You just know when you meet them.”
I was not going to fail at knowing when I met him. So after that, I “just knew” every single boyfriend was the one.
But they weren’t and I was faking it.
But then it happened.
I met the Sailor while backpacking and not caring about dating or marriage. I was single and loving it. And then that voice that comes from your chest and whispers inconvenient truths to you, said,
“Would the Universe really make it that obvious that he’s the one by having him wear a moon necklace.”
Because dear reader, my first name means “Lonely sun” (you can read about that in this blog) and the sun’s soulmate is the moon (obviously).
So, when I met the love of my life, I did just know. I didn’t believe it in that moment but it was true.
Then I started to ask older married couples,
“What is the secret to your long happy marriage?”
And I learned a few things that have definitely helped in my own marriage.
Now, The Sailor and I have just passed a big milestone. We have been together for 15 years, married for 10 of those. So maybe now, I can answer that question too.
What makes a long happy marriage?
Rules! 😂
Okay, I really mean…creativity. I firmly believe that married life is about making up whatever works best for you both. So that both members of the relationship can be happy.
For me that does mean rules, like rules of engagement, or guides to live by. There’s no punishment for breaking the rules. But when we both put into practice the rules we’ve agreed on, it means we are happier.
Here are our Top 5 Rules:
Accept each other’s quirks
It’s us against the world
Rejection always comes with an explanation
No mention of Divorce or breaking up unless you really mean it.
Accept each other’s quirks
At the start of our relationship, I said to The Sailor that he needed to accept my quirks, that was what being in love was. I have alot of random quirks and there’s also the culture difference which adds more quirks. So this was a great way to say, you just got to love me for me. Then one day, The Sailor did something strange, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I bet it had to do with being a clean freak (I am not). And as I was challenging him on it, he replied, “You need to accept my quirks too!”
I was not prepared to have my words thrown back at me. He was right! I can’t ask for what I’m not prepared to give in return.
There is a difference between a quirk and a bad habit or not doing your part. A quirk is someone’s personality, it’s really something they can’t change and honestly, it’s part of what makes them special, so they shouldn’t have to change it for the person they’re married to.
And since that day, we accept each other for our quirks. Most of the time, the other persons quirks are funny or endearing. I truly feel that The Sailor loves all of me and I love all of him. We are both very much our unfiltered weird selves. Sometimes, I think our relationship has manifested into this hilarious friendship where no one else could ever fully understand our humour, our language, or our bond.
It’s us against the world
This rule came from advice I heard and I shared it with The Sailor as an approach I wanted in our relationship. He agreed. It’s a little like “there’s no I in team.” While The Sailor and I are both very independent people and we have our own personas, when it comes to how we navigate our relationship and any challenges in life, it’s always as a team.
We’re the superheroes against the world.
When fertility issues wanted to knock us down (and real couples breakup over this), we talked, we were in it together, together we couldn’t get pregnant. I always say, it’s our uterus.
When The Sailor didn’t want to live in Canada anymore and later when I didn’t want to live in Terschelling. It got heated, it was hard not to think about me, me, me. But we talked about how we were both feeling, how could we both solve this unhappiness. We both agreed, there must be a way for us to both be happy. Where could we live where we would both be happy. We still talk about this, we don’t know that we’ve landed on the answer yet. But we’re making strides. Things have improved.
We can’t turn on one another and point fingers of blame. Yes, sometimes the discussion will get heated, yes, there are moments our feelings get hurt and we don’t feel heard. But we keep talking together about the problem we are trying to solve. There’s no me in marriage.
Rejection always comes with an explanation
There’s the timeless trope that when a woman says no in the bedroom, she actually says, “I have a headache.”
There’s a little bit of truth in that misogynist joke (because a woman should just be able to say, No, it’s called consent). The truth is rejection hurts on both sides. And sometimes someone wants or needs something more than another.
I learned this one the hard way. I lived with two exes before The Sailor. The first ex had a much lower libido than me. I was being rejected often and started to feel like there was something wrong with me, I took it personally. The second ex had a much much higher libido than me, now I was doing the rejecting.
So with The Sailor, we give eachother an explanation. Sometimes, it’s stress, sometimes it’s an upset tummy, sometimes it’s just not in the mood. What we’ve learned, is it is nearly always not about the person asking for the love. The rejection is never personal. That does alot for our self esteem.
And this goes beyond bedroom fun. It can be about cuddles (The Sailor does not always understand personal space), it can be about going for a walk together, it can be about playing a board game, or any request for the other person’s time and energy. Simply, saying, “No, because…”, removes any concern that the other person is not interested in YOU. Because it’s usually not about you, it’s about them and where thier energy is at.
No mention of Divorce or breakup unless you really mean it.
Back in the day, I had this friend who would breakup with her boyfriend every time they got into a fight. I would listen to her about all the fight drama and the breakup and she ALWAYS felt that that was the breakup that would stick. And it never was. It was a pattern she often repeated with all her boyfriends and later husbands. It was an emotional rollercoaster as her friend.
The Sailor and I would discuss this friends relationships and at some point we decided that threatening to breakup or threatening divorce was not something we would ever do in a fight. That if one of us ever uttered those words, it means we must feel very strongly about it. That to tell the other one you were thinking of divorce would be akin to breaking their heart. It was that serious.
And that’s not to say, divorce hasn’t come up, but it’s not been a threat, it has not been pointedly used.
When I was really depressed, the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing voice in my head would tell me lies that felt like truths. It would tell me that The Sailor would be happier if I divorced him because then he could marry a nice Dutch woman who would love to live in Terschelling and would pump out a bunch of little babies. I was preventing him from this amazing future. I would cry because it felt true and it must be right. Until, one day, I told the Sailor, I said, “Sometimes, I think about divorcing you so that you can be happy. You can marry a nice Dutch woman…” and he cried too. Not because he felt that I was threatening him with divorce but because he could hear how much I believed the lies my depression had told me.
And in that moment, he painted a picture for me of how miserable he would be if I left, how he wouldn’t move on or do the things I thought he would. That he would be devastated because those things were important but his life with me was more important.
I’ve done some therapy and taken some medicine, and the depression is gone. We made some changes too. Because divorce was never a real threat. Depression is a mean voice that tells you lies. Part of healing from depression was to tell The Sailor what the lies were in my head.
Because it’s us against the world.
It’s been 10 years married and 15 years since we met.
The Sailor is my favourite person in the whole world. Yet, that doesn’t mean that being married is always easy for us (even if we make it look easy). It still takes effort and some creativity. It’s been one of my greatest accomplishments being with this amazing man.