Why the First Year of Marriage is the Hardest

Disclaimer: I've only been married 5 years, so if you think it's really the 10th or the 25th, I can't contradict you:) But it was definitely the hardest year so far for us, in part because of external factors, but in part because of this stuff that I believe is universal to every marriage.

(1) The person you wake up next to every morning is the only person you will be having sex with for the rest of your life.* Intellectually, you are prepared for this. Unless your religious beliefs prohibit it (and sometimes if they do), you have probably already taken this person for a test drive and are pretty sure that you can live with what you got as your only nookie for a lifetime. Emotionally, though, you may not be. Most of us get some emotional validation out of new sexual partners or potential sexual partners, and you have now signed up to forgo this validation forever. Chances are you thought you were past this ... until temptation strikes and you realize you aren't. Or perhaps it happens to your partner. Either way, minefields all over.

*This is not true for open/polyamourous/multiple marriages. But I don't have one of those and the chances that you do are vanishing slim. If you have one, and its lasted past the first year, I'd love to hear your version of this issue.

(2) All your problems are now your spouse's, and vice versa. That cute little habit he has of going out with the boys every Thursday night? It's now coming out of your budget. Same for her need for a new designer purse every month. Bigger problems, like mental disorders or addictions, can no longer be glossed over. Your spouse may have promised you, with the best intentions in the world, that s/he will quit. This year is where you find out if s/he can do it or not, and whether or not you can live with the answer.

(3) Your baggage from your parents' marriage is different from your spouse's baggage from their parents' marriage. And yes, you both have baggage, all of which will be landing on the other at the same time, as you try to understand why they are not behaving like "normal married people" (i.e. your parents). Some people's parents' marriage(s) is/were so dysfunctional that they have baggage about their baggage. But I am not really talking to them - they generally already know there is a problem in this area. I am taking about really little things - like being annoyed that your spouse does not fix the leaking toilet (even though they have previously displayed no aptitude in this area), which you are subconsciously expecting them to fix, because that was the job of your parent of that gender. Sounds silly - but it happens. I thought that it didn't matter to me whether my husband was employed ... until he was suddenly unemployed, and I discovered a whole pile of buried stuff about who was supposed to be the breadwinner in the family, even though I had a well-paying job with excellent benefits at the time.

These are all I can think of for now, but I am sure there are more - What were your big challenges in your first year of marriage?

Destination Weddings

Dog Ate My Finances has a post up about how she has been invited to her second destination wedding this year, and what a hassle it is. She feels that it is unreasonable for the bride and groom to require her to pay vacation prices to attend their wedding.

These people are taking the ultimate destination wedding - they are going to be married in free-fall. Per the article, they and a "handful" of their friends will be married by Richard Garriott (side note: Would YOU want to be married by Lord British?) on a Zero Gravity Corporation flight. Cost: $5200 per person, which they are paying for themselves and their guests. "I think we will spend some of our married life simply paying off the expense, but I think that weightlessness is probably the best metaphor for love that one can experience,"the groom-to-be says.

Like Dog, I am not a big fan of destination weddings, but my take is slightly different. To me, destination weddings are the ultimate expression of the Bridezilla/Cinderella complex our culture has instilled in women. Prospective brides seem to believe that this must be the most wonderful, special day of their life. Everything must therefore be done in the most expensive manner possible, even if that mean sending yourselves or your parents hock deep into debt. Should anything fail to go as planned, then their special day, what is supposed to be the most wonderful day of their life, is ruined. As a consequence of the Bride's expectation about the importance of themselves and their day, all guests are required to make sure that everything is perfect for the bride and groom, at whatever cost or inconvenience this may entail.

This is a remnant of the time when a woman's entire function in life was to marry and have babies to carry on her husband's line. I would hope that we are a little beyond that now. I had a good time at my wedding, but I don't think that it was the epitome of my life experience; I am more than who I married.

The response I hear most often to this is something along the lines of "it's my day, and if you don't want to participate, don't come." This is true as far as it goes. But my distaste for destination weddings has very little to do with the inconvenience of the guests.

I don't go to any weddings that I do not want to attend. I agree that for business/social reasons people are sometimes obligated to go to weddings, but they have made the decision to be in the business/society where such things are obligatory. If a wedding is obligatory for those reasons, count it a work or social expense and chalk it up to the cost of doing business. If wedding attendance is not obligatory, then guests are going because they want to and therefore have no cause to whine.

My concern is actually for the couple. I have three major concerns (1) that the wedding not eclipse what you are actually celebrating; (2) that the wedding not send someone into bankruptcy; and (3) that the wedding not distract you from the fact that you are getting married.

A wedding is about more than being more posh/weird/whatever than your sister-in-law's/Princess Diana's/whoever. If you are religious, this is pretty much self-evident. If you are not, you are still gathering in front of those whose opinion you care about and announcing a solemn obligation. After the ceremony, a couple is just as married, wherever they were married and whatever they did afterward. But marrying before your friends and family is part of the joy of the occasion, and a destination wedding artificially parses your guest list. Five years on, what enjoy most about my wedding is remembering all my good friends who came.

A wedding is not worth going to bankruptcy court over. I do not understand how sensible people, people who would never consider having any other sort of huge party and charging it to their parents, feel that their parents are obliged to sacrifice so that they can have the perfect wedding. I know someone who denuded her retirement savings so that her child could have a "dream" wedding. I don't understand how anyone could let their mother put her retirement in to jeopardy for a party. I find it a lesser offense, but still quite silly, to borrow money yourself for a wedding. Take the example of the weightlessness couple above - do you think it would be any less meaningful if they saved until they could afford it? Or how about just having the wedding for the two of them and then a party after? Marriage is a difficult enough endeavor without going into it with a huge pile of debt for a huge party tacked on. Destination weddings are often sold as less expensive, but they can still be quite pricey, especially after all the little extras they try to sell you to make your day perfectly special.

A wedding means that you are married. Too often, I have seen the preparations for her "special day" overwhelm the bride's realization that she is actually going to have to be married to the flesh and blood groom. Once she has received the proposal, her entire mind is fixed on the wedding, with no thought to the day after. Sometimes this leads to quick divorce; some of my friends have held on with stubborn determination for years, making both themselves and their husbands unhappy. The common factor is that they got married, even though they were not happy in the relationship they were in before they were married. It was as though they believed an extravagant wedding would fix all the problems in their relationship. Destination weddings are sold as the opportunity to go to a fabulous location and have everything arraigned for you; the ultimate wedding fantasy.

Having a destination wedding does not make someone a bad person or mean that their marriage will not succeed. I don't understand, though, why anyone decides to artificially parse their guest list to pay extra money for someone else's conception of a what a wedding should be.

Christian PF Wii Giveaway

Thanks to BeachGirl's Budget Blog, I not only have the opportunity to win a free Wii, but also found Christian PF, a very professional-looking blog where I can indulge my passion for reading PF blogs instead of doing any actual work.

... And Then I Got Sick

Currently have fever, cough, runny nose, headache - all the makings of a bad cold, except that I have had them for a week now. If I were a good blogger, I'd write anyway, but, well, I suck. Better luck next week, I hope.

On Vacation

I am currently in Arizona, attending Shochugeiko. Like any vacation, I have to work twice as hard for the weeks before and after. As usual, when I get busy, my blog suffers. I have some thoughts that are trying to work their way out of my brain; hopefully they will come out in the next day or two and I'll have something interesting here.

Weight Watchers could work for you too

It is heading toward that most dreaded of all times ... bikini time. If you are considering losing weight, I strongly suggest that you give Weight Watchers a try. It's true that the stereotype of a meeting full of middle aged women carping about their boring lives has some basis, but I found many positives as well.

(1) IT WORKED. This is obviously the most important bit. I have lost a bit more than thirty pounds since last October, have reached my goal weight (5'7" - 151 lbs), and have maintained that weight for two months now. I have hypothyroid. I take medication, but the medication leaves me functional, it doesn't really make my metabolism normal. So it is quite difficult for me to lose weight. I have been trying various diets to lose these pounds and giving up due to hunger for the last five years.

(2) I can do everything online. I can check my "points" (Weight Watchers counts these, rather than calories), track my eating and exercise, and even enter my weight from your scale at home if I don't want to attend meetings. However ...

(3) Having someone else weigh you once a week gives me a sense of accountability. It's easy to weigh yourself at home and make excuses for "scale creep." We all know them ... "It's that time of the month" ... "I had a lot of salt with dinner last night" ... "The clothes I am wearing today add more weight than usual" ... "I've had a stressful week, but I'll do better next week, and the weight will just drop off" Knowing that someone was going to be writing my weight down in black and white every Thursday helped me stay motivated to keep going.

(4) I've seen it work for other people as well. I like to go to meetings because I was watching the other regulars around me lose weight too. Then, when I had a crappy week, and maintained or even gained, I could look around and remind myself that the program was working for all these people, and it would work for me if I worked it and didn't give up. I even found a workout buddy at my meeting who I now jog with 45 min 3 x a week.

(5) I WASN'T HUNGRY. My previous diet experiences consisted of starving myself until I couldn't take it any more. I never got lower than 170 lbs with any other diet, and I always gained the weight back after I started eating "normally" again. On Weight Watchers, even if I ran out of points, I could always take a 20 min walk and get a point back. Then I could eat a fruit, or a piece of light string cheese, or something to tide me over until bedtime. There are also several foods that have a points value of zero, including Asian pears. I never had to go to bed at 7pm because I was out of food for the day and still starving.

I don't have any affiliation with Weight Watchers, aside for paying them $9.99 a month to use their online tools. I don't get anything if you join. But if my doctor had not told me that it had worked for her, I would never have tried it myself, and I would still be 30 pounds overweight and miserable about it. If you need to lose weight, and are motivated to change your eating habits but aren't willing to be hungry, I urge you to visit Weight Watchers' website and try out a free meeting for yourself.

Baby Goat and Sweetie

We have a new baby goat. They sure are cute when they are little.

In sadder news for the herd, I have to cull Sweetie, one of my original nannies. She has chronic foot problems, and she hasn't kidded in over a year.

We don't send animals to the commodities market on our farm; we consider that inhumane and disrespectful of the animal. So, unless the animal is sick (in which case we shoot it and burn it), we eat it ourselves. Sweetie is destined to be ground meat and smoked sausage. She is the first adult nanny that I cull, so I am not sure what is best to do with her, and that is what my butcher recommends.

Some people don't understand how I can eat an animal that I have named and cared for. I don't understand why they would prefer to eat an animal that they know nothing about how it lived. Since she came onto my farm, I know that Sweetie has lived an idyllic goat life. If I buy meat at the supermarket, I can guarentee that the animal was not treated as well as I treat mine. I am therefore complaicent in whatever was done to that animal to get it to my table.

When things die, other things eat them; it is nature's way. Only humans fill our bodies with strange chemicals in an attempt to deny that process.


I admit that I am sorry to see Sweetie go. She was named for her disposition, and not in sarcasm.