In between picking out our granite slab and numerous trips to Home Depot for garden stuff (which was quickly demolished by a naughty puppy), we learned that Joel's sister Jill was in a horrible car accident. Thankfully she is ok (so to speak) but has a long and hard recovery ahead of her. We've been thinking of her and Joel is eager to see her in a few weeks, and from Albuquerque we will try to help as much as we can.
We also spent a long weekend in Tuscon for Memorial Day, which was one of our more interesting trips. Most of you know we love to travel, and I have always felt so lucky (and happy) to get stuck with a man who loves to plan and loves to get out and do things and has taken me so many places. We celebrated meeting three years ago this month, and during that time we have taken so many amazing trips together, from Jamaica to San Francisco and hopefully Alaska this fall, and even day trips to the Jemez or road trips to Colorado. This trip...not so much. I really can't pinpoint any one thing that went wrong, and overall we had an ok time, but I think that despite our best efforts at planning things just didn't go the way we had hoped.
When I returned to work on Tuesday and everyone asked about our trip, I told them I was actually a little relieved to come back to work, and my work-mom Annette exclaimed "That's so un-like you Lisa! I think it's a case of marrige year two!" Annette went on to explain how people seem to errenously think that the first year of marriage is the hardest, the adjustment, the change, etc, but at least for us it was wonderful. Everything that year was a first-first Christmas, first trip together, first dinner cooked in our house, even the first fight as a married couple. Aside from about a minute of newlywed blues when I packed up my wedding dress, I couldn't have been happier.
Now that some of that newlywed-ness has worn off, I am starting to see more of a glimpse of what our "real life" is. Not to say that I'm still not incredibly happy, and I think Joel is too, but I think we have settled into knowing our roles, and sometimes it's not a good idea to mix them up, and how we can divide chores by building on each of our strengths. i.e. Grocery shopping together=disaster. Another important thing I think we've (almost) worked through is how we handle conflict. I think we generally do pretty well but won't go into too much detail, other than when I get "fiesty" as Joel likes to say it is not a good thing. (Did he forget he married a Taurus?) We've all heard how it's important to establish the marriage biggies- money and budgeting, kids and families, intimacy and even how we spend our free time.
I read an interesting study (Huston, Caughlin, et al 2001) that looked at couples' happiness within the first years of marriage as predictors for their future happiness and ability to stay together. Guess what they found! Couples who were happier in their early years of marriage tended to stay married longer and were overall happier than couples who were disillusioned with their spouse within the first few months of marriage. They found that of the couples who stayed together (and were happy), the majority looked back at those years as their most difficult, but also the most joyous. I certainly believe that we will fondly look back at these years as the building of the foundation of our life together. One of those memories will be driving somewhere between T or C and the Elephant Butt and asking Joel when he knew he wanted to marry me, and he responded it was "when I knew you had the best heart and I couldn't see my life with anyone else."
I can only hope that our happiness will grow each day we spend togehter. But it got me to thinking, what is the deal with high divorce rates within the first two years of marriage? Is there any truth to that other than anecdotally?Apparently so, as I found out, since a Mexican legislature has proposed a new "two year marriage contract." Basically the contract outlines being married for two years, after that the couple could "renew" or just go their separate ways. Their rationale was that since over 50% of Mexican marriages end in divorce anyway, usually within the first two years, they would use this as a "trial" period. I could hear the vowes now, "Till two years do us part."
So to the newlyweds or not so newlyweds, what's your advice for the first two years? As a former single girl, I never imagined I would be here, so to all the single girls, what's important to you in a marriage?
