Saying Yes to a Marriage Proposal When You're Actually Not Sure
When my (now) husband proposed to me, I spewed out the word "yes," without having the slightest clue what the hell I was doing. Truth be told, I was caught up in the moment. It was my first proposal, and I wouldn't have wanted to ruin it by scratching my head and asking him to give me a moment to consider his offer. That wasn't the fairytale story I would want to relay to my friends. For me and my husband, our relationship was riddled with ups and downs that, frankly, would have left any woman scratching her head, wondering what she was getting herself into. I admit that when I said yes, I inwardly thought to myself, I can always change my mind. Nothing in life is permanent.
I began to wonder how many women out there (and men) actually believe, with 100% of their heart of hearts, that the person they are gazing at is The One. My husband and I admitted to each other years after our marriage ceremony that we both questioned the longevity of our tumultuous relationship. We are two very different people with very different ways of handling our differences. I'm the talker. He's the listener. I'm the feeler. He's the thinker. When I don't feel heard, I raise my voice. When I raise my voice, he falls asleep. When he falls asleep, I explode. When I explode, no one is happy.
And so, we have our differences in the way we communicate.
I truly believed that the reason -- and perhaps the ONLY reason -- we worked out so beautifully, is that we both wanted the relationship to work. Some part of us felt that what we had was worth fighting for. We went to couples therapy. We learned each other's languages. We read books like "The Seven Principles to Making Marriage Work," by John Gottman, to help us understand what the heck was going on with us.
I have been married to my very different husband for 6 years, and we have been with each other for 8 years. Each year we fall more and more in love with each other. That is not to say that we never fight anymore, but now we fight differently. Our arguments are more grounded, less spun out of control. We made a decision to be with each other, and that one decision has led to romance. Perhaps it's not the love-at-first-sight romance you read about in books or see in movies, but it's our romance and it's wonderful.
I have realized that no matter what a relationship looks like from the outside, whether it's wrapped in a perfectly tied bow with love oozing out of it or it's a busted up mess of a box in the beginning, there may still be problems down the road when the wrapping paper is off and the bow is a tangled mess. Love is a gamble no matter what. I happened to find someone who I can be my most awful and my most wonderful self with. That, for me anyway, is worth the risk.