The Pros and Cons of Marriage (from the eyes of a newlywed)

So, sometime last year I ran across a blog giving advice on how to make your marriage as good as possible.  It had some things I agreed with and some things that made me smirk (bring home flowers to your wife weekly?  Please, I’m lucky to get biannually), and then I saw why: the author had been married four months.  Now, I don’t mean to diss on four-month marriages, but…No, I mean to diss.  Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

This post is going to be a lot like that for people that have been married longer than I have, but maybe you’ll find it humorous that I’m so naïve about the life I have ahead of me.  The Man and I just passed the two-year mark, so we’ve been married long enough to realize that marriage is work, but we’re still in the newlywed stage.  The following is a list of some of the Pros and Cons of marriage that I’ve discovered (this list also applies just as much to people in long-term committed relationships).

Pro: You’re no longer single! 

You don’t have to worry if someone likes you or not, you don’t have to go on awkward first dates, and you nabbed one of the most attractive people in the world.

Con: You’re no longer single. 

You will start to miss that angsty feeling of not knowing if someone likes you or not.  You’re going to miss awkward first dates, because you were meeting new people all the time.  The most attractive person in the world will start farting in front of you and blaming it on “barking spiders.”

Pro: You’ve got someone helping you pay your bills. 

No longer is it all on your shoulders (or, if you’re a moocher like me, partially on your shoulders and heavily on the shoulders of your parents).  Sure, the cost of living goes up, but when two people are pitching in it just feels easier.

Con: You seem to have more bills than ever, and you sometimes have to pay for someone else’s stuff.  When The Man and I first got married, I had almost $20k saved up.  With school, living in separate states for a while, and the rising price of gas, it was gone in less than a year.  It felt kind of unfair, because if I hadn’t have gotten married I would be sitting pretty right now on a sizeable savings account. 

Pro: You have an awesome and ridiculously handsome/beautiful cheering section rooting for you. 

Life is really hard, and when you live on your own it feels doubly so.  Sure, you can call your mum every day and have her tell you that you’re great, but she birthed you; she better feel that way!  When you’re married you have the opportunity to go home every day to someone who thinks you’re so incredible that they decided to spend the rest of their life with you.  That can be a pretty awesome feeling.  I’m not saying they’re always super excited and happy to see you all the time and you’re so wonderful and everything you do is perfect and oh gosh oh gosh they’re the luckiest person on Earth; I’m saying that when you’re really struggling, they’re there for you.

Con: They know the real you.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have boogers.  And I poop.  And sometimes I lay around all day doing nothing because I am one of the laziest people out there.  Also, I hate washing dishes, and we don’t have a dishwasher.  And The Man sees all of that.  He knows the worst sides of me more than anyone (I mean, he’s seen me without make-up on at least…2 occasions!).  And I get on his nerves sometimes, because living with someone like me is not a cakewalk. 

There are tons of other pros and cons, but due to modern technology people have extremely short attention spans now (myself included) and I don’t want to bore you.

See marriage, like anything else in life, is always going to have good and bad.  It may even have equal amounts of good things and bad things.  The trick is to look qualitatively, not quantitatively.  I have a best friend who has promised to stick with me through hard times and easy times, through wrinkles and fat rolls, through snorting laughs and annoying eating noises.  My future children will have a father who loves them, sets an example for them, and makes sure their needs are provided for.  I have someone who is always pushing me to be a better person, to look at things from a different perspective, to serve more, to love more, and to be more.  And on top of that, he loves to clean!

Sure, maybe I have to be less selfish and of course there will be other people I have chemistry with, but it’s not worth it to me.  Losing what I have and the joy it brings me isn’t worth a year of passion, a nicer apartment, or any of the other things leaving The Man might bring me.

I think we lose track of that in day-to-day life.  We get preoccupied with how monotonous or boring our lives seem, and we forget that it’s really stability and happiness.  In five years when we hit the infamous “seven-year lull,” I hope The Man and I can remember why we’re together, and I hope we fight for this relationship, because it’s a darn good one.