Marriage is Hard, Especially if You’re Doing it Right
I’ve been married to my wife for over fifteen years now. When we got married, I remember thinking and being resolute in the fact that I didn’t believe in divorce. The reality is that I was too naive to understand the struggles a married couple goes through.
Today, I know that marriage is hard and I have compassion for all the marriages that haven’t survived. My parents’ marriage didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want my marriage to end and I will fight like hell to prevent it from happening, but every couple years something will happen that will completely shake me to my core.
It happened right after we got married as we were adjusting to married life. It happened again once we found out we were pregnant with our first son and again when he was a toddler. Finding out our second son was autistic and realizing we had to move was another. Then there was the hardest one of all: when my wife decided she no longer wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and wanted to go to law school to become a lawyer.
At my core, I am a supportive husband and that was no exception here, but this is where two opposing wants and needs clashed. I completely understood my wife’s desire to “do something hard” and I wanted her to be happy, but this was the opposite of what I wanted. I had gotten very comfortable with being the bread winner and my wife managing things at home. However, I knew that I couldn’t tell her not to do it.
My options were to a) not support her and have her build resentment against me or b) support her and adjust no matter how hard it might be. I chose the latter, but I severely underestimated the situation. Supporting her and adjusting were far harder than I could’ve ever imagined.
Our marriage went from having a fully available wife to one that left early in the morning and didn’t come home until late at night while I continued to try and succeed at my career. I read a lot of articles about what it’s like to be the spouse of a law student and the stats were not on my side. The incidence of divorce is far higher than the norm.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out why.
A couple months into her first semester and I started experiencing high anxiety that led to panic attacks. It felt as though I didn’t have access to my logical brain any more. I was unable to communicate effectively with my wife — no matter how hard I tried, she could not understand my struggle.
One of the first panic attacks happened on a Friday night after a long week. I was looking forward to my wife coming home so we could spend some time together. She called and told me that she wanted to go have drinks with some of her classmates and not come home right away. I felt something break inside of me and my anxiety boiled over into a full-blown panic attack. While it was obvious that I was disappointed in my wife’s choice, the physical reaction I was having was wildly disproportionate.
As these incidences continued to happen and I had no tools to fight them off or communicate effectively, I became desperate. So, I did the only things I could think of doing: I checked myself into therapy and got my doctor to prescribe medication.
I had become so angry with my wife for going to law school and even angrier that she couldn’t seem to understand my struggle. I went into therapy with all fingers pointed at her as I legitimately believed she was ruining my life. This was before I understood anything about past trauma and how it presents itself (more on that in future posts).
Four years later and I’m still going to therapy and have also been working with a life coach for the last two. I’m no longer on medication and what I’ve learned and continue to learn has helped my marriage become better and stronger, but it still isn’t easy.
Here’s what I know: the two people in a marriage are constantly growing and changing. This is a universal truth. When one person changes, the other has to adjust and vice versa. Almost every day there are little micro adjustments that are needed. If you ignore these micro adjustments long enough, eventually they will turn into a macro adjustment that can no longer be ignored. Every now and then, like my experience supporting my wife going to law school, there are large, wholesale adjustments that can turn your world upside down. If you don’t grow and respond in kind, then you and your spouse will eventually grow apart.
This growing and adjusting is some of the hardest and scariest work you will ever do, but it is worth it, the only path towards a prosperous marriage, and you will become a better person. I went into therapy blaming my wife for my problems and came out the other end having a deeper understanding of who I am and how much I’m actually responsible for our conflicts and my anxiety. Spoiler alert: most of it. I now have tools at my disposal to identify and communicate my emotions because the only thing that is certain is this will happen again.
By the way, my wife is a kick ass lawyer.
