by Tara Pringle Jefferson
Last week, I wrote an article (please read it if you haven’t already) about how my relationship with my husband progressed from love > baby > marriage. I was sharing my experiences in the hopes that someone else who was in the same position would draw strength from it.
Others (particularly on the Happily Ever After fan page) did not see it as such.
Everyone is most certainly entitled to their own opinion and I don’t mind disagreement. As a writer, it comes with the territory. Some of these comments also got me thinking about the following:
What matters more: how your marriage starts or how your marriage evolves? We tend to put a lot of emphasis on how a relationship starts, but as it progresses and matures, are we still quick to judge?
Take my marriage for example. We struggled in the beginning due to a heap of new roles and responsibilities thrust at us within the first three months of saying “I do”: new place, new baby, new marriage, new jobs. It was a rough start but because we decided to lean on each other and make these adjustments as a team, we made it through and are stronger than ever.
A lot of marriages don’t make it through the rough patches, for whatever reason. But they may have started out with a perfect courtship, perfect engagement ring, perfect wedding day…then it all fell apart. Sometimes those early struggles are necessary to chisel and shape the marriage into what it is meant to be. At other times, those early struggles break a marriage before it even has a chance to develop.
BMWK family – what do you think matters more – how the marriage starts or how it evolves?
Tara Pringle Jefferson is a freelance writer, blogger and PR professional living in Ohio with her husband and two kids. She’s also Managing Editor of BlackAndMarriedWithKids.com. Follow her on Twitter or check out her blog for more insights on love and family.
It absolutely matters where it starts because it pushes you in a particular direction. But ultimately what becomes most important is, are you or will you prepare yourself to experience an awesome finish.
http://www.ruleyourwife316.com
The more I speak with married couples, the more I realize that many have not had the “perfect” start. In fact, some of the strongest, happiest marriages I know came from tough beginnings. Marriage isn’t a fairy tale, and I think couples who struggle early on sometimes have a more realistic sense of what’s needed to make a marriage last: commitment, compromise, communication, etc. Thanks for the great post!
I agree with this! I don’t think that it matters where you start. It matters MORE what you put into it. My husband and I had an “unorthodox” beginning — I was married to someone else. If I had a dollar for everyone that doomed us from the beginning… This year, we’ll be celebrating our 20th anniversary. So when people start quoting statistics and telling you that YOUR marriage won’t make it, you should tell them where to go and what to do!
I agree with this perspective. I personally didn’t get off to a great start because we were both young and not ready for marriage or the precious little girl who was coming into our lives. However, through living life together and maturing and growing as all married couples must do we will be celebrating our 28th year together this year. Couples need to hang in their and they will reap the rewards of their persistence and commitment.
Hello Erica B.
I am so glad you post that you and your husband had an unorthodox beginning and look at you guys still together 20 years later.
Thanks so much for your honesty. Black people have a tendency to always try and bring god into every equation and always want to be so judgemental and most of the time it’s on the negative side.
And the meaning of life is unforseen occurences. So you can never predict what situation you may be in and how you would handle it.
Tara I think it is a toss up and depends on the couple. If the couple can’t let go of what happen in the beginning then they will struggle. It is also important how long it takes to get over the “beginning years”. At a point the struggle becomes so engrained in the fabric of the relationship that it makes the mountain harder to climb over. If they spend the first 5 or 10 years hashing and re-hashing the start of the marriage, it is going to be difficult (not impossible) to start again. Settle it quick
You hit the nail right on the head. I’ve been married for 10 years. I got married at age 20, was in the army and within the first 2 years I was dealing with married life, army life and living in a foreign country away from family. I had a couple of affairs. This is all within those first 2 years. 8 years later, my husband and i are no closer or stronger than we were back then. We both agree that we got marreid too young, that we were not truly ready but what do you do 10 years and 2 kids later?? We had a rough start and due to rehashing and reliving the past and holding on to regrets and grudges, we continue to torture one another. I believe at some point, a decision has to be made to either forgive and move forward or count your loses and leave. Being in limbo is a horrible place to be
Yes it matters how your marriage starts. Along with the middle and the end. It ALL matters!
Especially when you have kids in the picture. You will always have someone watching your life. And you influence them toward one way or another. We have a responsibility to learn from our poor beginnings and teach better as we mature and gain more understanding. Starting off wrong, doesn’t equate advertising it was right. You want to teach our children’s children to not do was we say and not at we do. We want to teach them to do was we do and as we say. And if we start off wrong and then say do whatever feels good to you and hope to persevere through it that’s just wrong to me. It’s irresponsible.
If you start off right and end up wrong, was it really right? Maybe not, because doing it right include a maturity of the mind, body, soul and spirit. With that, you gain an opportunity to deal with the rough patches and endure until the end.
If you start off wrong and end up doing right, please share your testimony to hopefully prevent others from your poor judgement. It’s not to blame or pass judgement, but to enable others to walk on your ceiling as it is their floor.
I recently read a book that used Pioneering as an analogy to marriage. Pioneers seek out new territory with a great hope and are aware of the difficulty ahead of them. But the journey and the rewards outweighs the difficulty. They will take a risk and responsibility and do whatever is necessary to gain the great reward. Because it’s leaving a legacy an not just an memory.
– Just my 2 cents!
I think where you end up is way more important than where you started. Very surprised and disappointed in some of the reaction you received. Thanks for putting it out there.
I think what matters is your level of commitment. There is no question that difficulty at the beginning of a marriage is a strain. We did not have children before marriage but my husband had Hodgekins lymphoma and had to go thru chemo and radiation. I had quite a few people (church folk, no less) “commend” me for sticking with him thru the illness. “You are so young, suppose he can’t have children?” I just said “then we won’t”. My commitment to him was absolute, and I think that that is the deciding factor, not whether or not you had a picture perfect courtship, the perfect engagement ring or children before the marriage.
How you start matters. Beginning a marriage with stress and misunderstanding can kill it before it ever gets a chance to evolve. Often times the people who have survived the rough start made it *in spite of* how they started, not because of it. I remember the post from last week. I am not referring to that situation. I am thinking more of people getting married with who are really not prepared for the challenges marriage will throw at them.
We have to get out of taking pride in being the exceptions to the rule. We have gotten so used to going against long odds that, in some ways, we subconsciously seek out situations where the odds are stacked against us. That is a losers approach. We have to play to win. It would be prudent to have as many factors as possible working in your favor BEFORE you get married.