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.