Marriage is hard work

When people would say to me that marriage was hard work I always assumed they meant that the longer you were married the more you would fight and argue. But now seven and half years down the track i think i get it! Marriage is hard work but the hard work is maintaining love within your marriage. Young love is easy. It is all encompassing. It is entangled in lust. It is addictive. I can see why so many marriages fail. When marriage becomes "work" it is easy to say goodbye rather than put that work in. On the surface young love looks more rewarding. I think what these divorcing couples are missing is in fact commitment. I do genuinely believe these people love each other, maybe not enough but more importantly they are not committed. We were driving to Questacon the other day discussing this very topic. I can safely say I am over the honeymoon and babymoon periods of our life long commitment. If you were to look at Nathan's and my relationship it would look boring. We have done the whole lust thing, we have done the white wedding thing, we have had babies. What do we have to look forward too? Most people would probably only see the hard work of raising three boys, working on progressing Nathan's career, figuring out what I'm going to do when the boys are at school...... Those things don't sound exciting. That don't make the blood rush from your head. They don't get you heart pumping. Thoughts and daydreams don't feature those topics. This people is the hard work stage of marriage! But am I finding it too hard to bear?
Hell NO!!!! Does my heart miss a beat when Nathan walks in the door? Not very often! Do I sit around doodling Jenni Rickard on my note pad? Gosh no! Do i have nothing better to do with my weekdays but to plan what we will do on the weekend? Ummmmm plenty! Does this mean that we are no longer in love? No. I think it means our love has grown. It is no longer all encompassing. It now encompasses our family (and most of the things we were doing in the all encompassing part of our relationship was NOT PG!) Nathan and I both agreed in our recent discussion that our love is less superficial. There is more to us than Nathan and Jenni now. Our love is deeper.
I have been reminiscing recently about being a young woman first in love, who's only responsibilities were herself and how exciting being that girl was. I think the thought of her is exciting. Would I want to go back and be her? Hell no! Do people who walk away from their marriages really find that person who they are looking for? Or is it a case of you can never go back? I guess I wont know! Because even after the terrible fight I had with Nathan this week I still remain committed to my marriage. If I have painted a grim picture of long marriages it really isn't like that! Nathan and I talk all the time about our future. Even if we don't have the heat of a new relationship we still have all the potential new relationships have. We still haven't reached our potential. We still have things to look forward too. In not too much longer we will be able to leave the boys at home by themselves and do things as a couple again. And then not too much father past that the boys will be fully grown and then we have huge plans! We are counting down the years til Ben's 21st when we will taking a round the world trip to all the places Nathan visited and only got to see the swimming pool!
So yes i now realise what people mean when they say marriage is hard work but we are not turned off by it at all. Nathan and Jenni Rickard say bring it on!