Nearly One Year In…5 Lessons I’ve Learned Being Married
As I sit down to write this blog post, I’m one month shy away from being married for one year. July 23, 2022 was one of the greatest days of my life, AND, it was also one of the most overwhelming I’ve ever experienced.
But of course, that’s what I learned in hindsight 20/20. Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to know the things I know NOW back then? Why yes, of course.
Alas, that is not the case, and such is life. As I sit here reflecting, there are so many things that have happened, lessons I’ve learned, and moments I wish I could go back and change. This last 11 months of marriage have been some of the most intense in terms of learnings that I think I’ve ever experienced, and while many of them have been challenging, I wouldn’t take any of it back. Because really, I LOVE who I am right now.
I never knew that I could feel this profound sense of self (including being more aware and connected to myself, my nervous system, inner child) and goodness does it feel good.
I’d like to say it’s come at a cost - but that’s not true.
It’s come because my husband and I have had the opportunity to learn each other in greater depths now than was possible during the engagement. Over the course of the year prior to getting married, and now that I look back, I didn’t realize how much time and energy I actually put into the planning. It actually never felt stressful to me (quite the opposite that I LOVED planning) and I’d go back and do it all over again — or better yet, maybe I can help YOU plan yours! I am a good event planner after all :)
But now that the planning is done, the wedding has come and passed, I see how much the wedding takes over, even if you don’t think it does.
As we now are married and fallen into a bit more of a routine, there’s expanded time and energy to dive deep into ourselves, individually, and together as a couple. This has been stretching and beautiful at the same time.
I’m still waiting to understand what people mean by “the honeymoon phase” as we definitely have not had that in year one of marriage. Although I know our story of meeting, falling deeply in love so quickly, and a speedy engagement quite possibly counts as what others would consider the feelings associated in the honeymoon phase.
All this being said, I wanted to share these reflections plus 5 beautiful lessons I’ve learned in nearly one year of marriage.
These are all things I wish I knew before, so if you’re on the path to engagement, just married, or still waiting to meet your special someone, I do think these lessons will help give you some truth to relationships and the importance of doing the “work.”
5 LESSONS I’VE LEARNED (IN NEARLY ONE YEAR OF MARRIAGE)
Taking radical accountability / responsibility is the best path for a healthy and loving marriage. This has been something both my husband and I have learned to embody and by doing so, it releases the charge of any crunchy moment or fight. When you can own up to things you’ve said or done it helps build trust. Without trust, the relationship will not thrive. What this has looked like for me is to be accountable if I acted out of my best self, said something that hurt my husband even if I didn’t mean to. Saying “I’m sorry I hurt you, that was not my intention” is one of the greatest things you can hear from someone else (not just a partner). What does this ultimately mean? You’ll have a LOT of ego deaths in a relationship! It sucks to feel like you might be “giving in,” but that’s not what it means or is about. For me, this has been having awareness of places that I want to improve to become a better human.
Give each other compassion, the benefit of the doubt, empathy, and acceptance, even when you don’t want to. This goes hand-in-hand with #1 on this list as the goal is to grow, enhance and find more love and connection in the relationship. In order to do so, remembering WHY you married this person, or chose them is of the essence. I know in my case, this has been a tremendous lesson because there are times I want to “be right” yet that brings us further apart, not closer. In any relationship, you’ll learn more about yourself and your partner as you begin peeling back the layers of what I call the Spiritual Onion. This is sticky and many times uncomfortable because you’re dealing with past traumas, a wounded inner child, and projecting unhealed parts of yourself onto your partner and relationship. Now double this, as there are two partners (sometimes more) in a relationship which can lead to some heated moments. The goal with this lesson is to once again take ownership of self, show up with kindness towards yourself as you grow, and in turn do the same with your partner.
On the wedding day (and every day after that), be clear on your personal boundaries and stick to them. This goes back to the first paragraph of starting this blog post, that the wedding was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had to date. Now, I’m sure I’m not alone in this thinking, but what I mean by this is I was not yet aware of the personal boundaries I needed to have in order to show up as my best self and best energy. I allowed myself to get swept up in things my husband wanted to do during our three day extravaganza, such as going for the group hike when I deep down knew I needed solo time. My husband wanted everyone to really feel seen during the wedding and made it a point to have breakfast with others, stop and talk whenever we saw someone. I love this about him, and, it drained my energy. And so by the time our wedding day rolled around I was burnt out. On top of that, I don’t feel I looked my best during the nuptials or reception. I accept the kind compliments that you more than likely think I look great - I can see the puffiness, the exhaustion and overwhelm in my face, and in how I acted. With all this being said, really understanding your personal boundaries in a relationship will help you show up as your best self. This is something I wish I knew back then; at least I know it now!
Learn the Four Horseman and understand which ones you and your partner engage in during arguments. Fights can be messy, but they don’t need to be! There ultimately should be guidelines or rules on how to fight — and the four horsemen are pretty much guaranteed to break a relationship. Our therapist had us rate ourselves for each one (Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling) out of 1-10 during fights and specific examples we both were doing. Through couples therapy and truly integrating the work, it’s been incredible to see that I used to be at very high levels of each one, such as eye rolling, becoming avoidant, saying unkind comments all in an attempt to be heard and seen. As you can imagine, the more one engages in these, the more distant the relationship will become. I can’t recommend this enough: understand which ones you do and put in the work to reduce them as much as possible. With 90% accuracy, John Gottman (the creator of the Horsemen) can predict if you’re headed to divorce by watching how you fight. I don’t know about you, but the thought of divorce is not something I think anyone wants. Learn these, implement tools to avoid them, and create more trust in your relationship.
Understand your shared values and create relationship visions based on them. I’m very grateful my husband and I shared our values very early on in the relationship as I think this is something all couples should do far before they get engaged. I’ve worked with clients who don’t do these and feel blindsided when they learn they don’t have similar ones. We recently went back to review ours invidivually and share as a couple, choosing ones that resembled where we are now, including our personal definitions and examples. We were then able to see where there have been some misalignments in the relationship and re-calibrate together. It was also a nice reminder that we are on the same page, even if there have been times we feel we’re not. Based on your values, you can then create goals, travel plans, or visions to get you excited about the future. For us, this has looked like breaking down travel into specific categories we want to do, deciding if they are best done prior to kids or after, as an example.
I hope these resonate in some capacity for you and help you get excited about partnership, understand how to fight healthier, and know what it takes to have a beautiful relationship!
I’ve done a few podcast episodes on my relationship, including getting engaged, BTS of our wedding + mini-moon and other juicy topics related to relationships. I highly recommend checking them out below.
Path to the Altar: What I Wish I Knew Before Getting Engaged
My Wedding: The Fun, Regrets & Crunchy Moments
Why I Solo Traveled After My Honeymoon
My Honeymoon In The Maldives: Not Is All It Seems In Paradise. Fights, Jet Lag & Travel Chaos
I’d love to know if you enjoyed this blog post. Please share and questions, comments, or thoughts you have below. And let me know if you’d like me to share helpful tools I’ve learned + use in our relationship.
Xx,
Nikki