This Is Not Marriage Advice. Sort of.

By Jeff Belmonte from Cuiabá, Brazil (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The season for bridal showers came when I was younger. That rush of marriages taking place every few months. Friends and cousins and co workers all at that age where they start tying the knot.

With it come the bridal shower invites. At least, where I’m from they did. Is that a regional thing? You’d all gather around with your gifts and sip mimosas (or beers, depending on the crowd) and inevitably a journal or index card would get passed around the table for you to write down your best advice for the couple.

I was, during that season of my life, frighteningly unqualified to be handing out relationship advice.

I still am.

The difference is, now I know it. Back then I wrote little quips like Never go to bed mad and Always make time for one another.

Which, yeah, is valid. Sure.

Brilliant advice? No. It’s not.

Because that shit they can figure out on their own.

There’s no advice I would offer to couples today if asked. I can only offer my perspective. I can only share what’s worked for me in my current relationship. None of it worked in any previous relationship I had. All of it is particular to me and my husband. But I think perhaps people can extrapolate from it some juicy nuggets they can chew on, digest, and crap out some helpful morsels of their own.

(That sounds so gross. Sorry. Analogies aren’t always my thing.)

So there’s the first thing I’d share: Stop asking for advice. Because what works for one couple may be disastrous for another.

Also, the person you’re with today is not going to be the person you’re with years from now. Not because I’m fatalistic and believe you won’t stay together. But because people change. Yourself included. It’s natural.

It’s also scary.

There may be times you look at the person beside you and ask if you even recognize him or her any longer.

Does it matter?

The better question, for me, has always been Do I want to take the time to get to know this person? If the changes he’s shown haven’t changed the kindness or the humor or the tenderness that I so love and value in him, then it’s me I need to confront. Not him. It’s my aversion to change I need to examine. The same applies to him when I change.

You’re going to argue and it’s going to hurt. A lot of the time it won’t even be over what matters. You’ll be dealing with a sick child or a lost job or money trouble or all three and more, but it’s the laundry on the floor that will cause the big blow out. It’s hard though, in the heat of the battle over whether or not it’s a big deal for your partner to just throw the goddamn laundry in the hamper versus whether it’s a big deal to just pick up what your partner was too fucking distracted to care about and throw it in since you are already on your way to the hamper if you really feel so fucking passionate about it, to remember that your partner is as stressed as you and needs you to maybe hold some space for him.

You’ll want to throw things at the wall.

Remember that the more peanut butter there is in the jar, the bigger the dent it will leave in the sheet rock. Just saying. I mean, that’s what I’ve been told. Let’s move along.

You’re not perfect.

You’ll do things like scream for help while you cling to a wooden beam after falling through the ceiling of your kitchen because you didn’t know you could only walk on the beams in the attic. And he’ll come running and unwrap you from the wires tangled around your legs, help you down with a gentle hand, and dust you off while checking to be sure you are injury-free before calling your mother to laugh over it. Meanwhile, when he trips down your porch steps as you are both walking out to the car, you’ll spend your entire thirty minute drive with him next to you watching as you struggle to laugh in silence with tears streaming down your cheeks and your O-ring struggling from the strain of trying to hold in all those guffaws.

It’s ok though, because he isn’t perfect either.

Sometimes he’ll make you feel you’re not enough and sometimes you’ll make him feel like he has no voice. You’re both going to make each other feel lots of feels. Some of them, if you’re lucky, will feel so damn good. Some of them, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, will hurt.

There’s never a win or lose.

Except for this . . . if you both find ways to make the other feel loved enough that it carries you through the times when you feel otherwise. When you feel less than. If you both still hold onto that . . . you’re winning.

I have no advice.

I only know that it matters when he’s the calm one in the room. It matter when I pack his lunch. It matters when he reaches back to hold my hand as we’re walking. It matters when I encourage him to chase his dreams. It matters when he does the same.

There is no magic guide book that will help you navigate this, or any other relationship. But it helps to find the things that matter to you both.

I sort of can’t wait for the next bridal shower invite.

I’ll be looking for them to pass around the journal or hand out those decorated index cards. I’ve reached the point in life where I know that the flowery sayings are just that. They’re nice and pretty, but ultimately will end up as dry and fleeting as a flower in a vase.

No, I won’t write out any quips or advice. Instead I’ll share a story filled with laughter and heartache, highs and lows, pain and joy. It’ll be all about me and my husband and our life and the particulars, most likely, will never apply to you and your relationship.

But the hope?

That always applies.

Eternity Can’t Be Ours

I miss you already.

Not the way I do when you leave for work or are away for days. I miss you then, too, in that silly way that makes me coo into the phone when I hear your voice and smile thinking of your return.

No, I miss you more than that.

When I stop to think about the fact that everything will end . . .

That we will end . . .

There’s no avoiding our goodbye.

I’ll go first. Or you. We might go together.

But we’ll be over.

This love that bleeds from me to you and back again, a never-ending pulse of life that flows between us, will end.

Our language will be catalogued among the many whose echoes have faded from existence. Our inside jokes will illicit no giggles.

I want us to go on forever, comets across the sky.

Our love streaking in vapor trails through the universe. They’ll point up and stare as we burn beyond the moon and leave behind the hope that comes from wishing upon our light.

I want us to go on forever, hands locked together and legs entwined.

Sculptures, quiet muses, for the artists who want to know what love looks like.

I want us to go on forever, filling pages with stories of struggle and triumph.

Our love soaked in tears from those who read between our lines.

My heart aches from missing you already . . . in those moments when I stop and breathlessly recall that eternity can’t be ours.

My Lover’s Eyes

They are both alms and torment.

Gifts that see all the good in me. All the parts of me I’m proud of and all the times I stood taller. On my own.

They curse me, a burden I shoulder, when they bear witness to every shameful moment of weakness. All the times I lashed out in anger or curled inward, shattered and small.

They are hands locked in prayer. Tense with wanting.

They crawl to me, like a man adrift in a desert begging to sip from my palms.

They seep into the shadows of my life . . . and become a beacon.

When I am most fearful, I look up and find them, reaching for me. Ever steady. Large, rounded pools welcoming me to take shelter at their sandy shores and lie beneath a bank of trees that offer a quiet, calming susurrus in which to take comfort.

They offer a flame by which to warm my hands. A mug of cocoa over which I can huddle, my back turned to any storm that lashes icy tentacles across my weary shoulders.

Questions rumble through their depths.

Patience rises to their earthy surface. Tiny tendrils, strong and true, turned toward the sun.

Turned toward me.

To Each an Audience (A Drabble)

She kept to the corners, arms crossed tight against her chest.

He worked the room, a smile for everyone he greeted.

She fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, knuckles white around the glass in her hand.

His laugh wrapped its way around each guest, clapping the backs of those who walked by.

When the car pulled up he reached for her fingers, shoulders slumped. He drank up the smile she saved just for him.

At home, he kept to the corners. Arms crossed tight against his chest. She worked the room, her laugh wrapping its way around his heart.

(A “drabble” is a short story consisting of exactly 100 words.)