My wife and I married in January 2003. We met in a dockside general store, as I was purchasing a case of red bull. I would not have noticed her, had she not made some reference to the quantity that I happened to be purchasing. Shortly after that chance encounter, where I was keen to meet her again, but knew not of her name, I began enquiring around, I explained her appearance to friends and the name I was told ultimately turned out to be incorrect. As matters transpired thankfully, I eventually discovered her name and a liaison was arranged. We will, this forthcoming January, have been married for 7 years. Among many couples, this seventh year can hold some tribulation. However, I can confidently say that my wife and I fear not such a landmark, and hopefully this article may provide some slight morsels of wisdom (if you can call them that) to impart to any newer married couples or those considering the journey that marriage is.
In essence, I have determined there to be three core keys to getting to this stage and they are simply: Love, Friendship and Perseverance, coupled with a good dose of faith, (whatever you determine that to be). My wife and I are from two very opposite backgrounds. I am English and she Canadian-Croatian. Her father a building contractor and mine, a British Army officer. However, we met, fell in love and within 6 months of “courting” in a bid to live together south of the border in the US Capital, we married.
Now, every sidewalk sage will tell you that the first 12 months of marriage are usually the toughest times, and these learned individuals would not be wrong. We very much started on close to nothing; we had a couple of assists, but beyond that were pushed into the wide blue yonder of legal coupledom. I worked nights; and for a while, she didnʼt work at all, our new relationship, despite having been built on distance to a certain extent, maintained a certain distant flair as I would leave early and come home late.
Choppy waters appeared early, in the form of alcohol. The symptoms – I eventually discovered – appeared gradually, but once they had a hold, latched on pretty tightly. For 2 years or so in the US it became quite rough, until we decided that returning to Canada may be the solution. In hindsight; it was by far the best move; but did not appear so initially. The storm continued for another year or so with various solutions for remedy, but non taking, until friends lead us to our faith.
It was tough for both of us, and as I reflect back on those relatively distant times, I can only assume that despite the love we had for each other, there was a certain lack of other options for the pair of us, and so we found ourselves having to stick with it. Jobs changed, locations changed, jobs were gained and still ʻthe troublesʼ continued, but we muscled on, getting to know one another, learning each other, understanding our languages, style and triggers, so that our love could grow as well as our friendship.
Having focussed on these areas and addressed most of the initial issues that surfaced I can now truly say that we are the best-est of friends; we love each other more than we ever have; and frankly persevering this far, the itch thing is not even a concern for either of us!
So my morsels… Basically, when I began, I was going to define marriage, love, man and woman and then go from there. However, as I have written, I feel in order to impart wisdom [at this stage] on marriage, one has to define it in emotion. And simply put, if you have love and friendship and you are prepared to persevere through the various ups and downs that come with joining two people of the opposite sex, who, (as has been countlessly identified by numerous books and TV gurus) think and do things very differently, then it can and will become an amazing life experience that will effect not only you, but others around you. There will always be temptations, left, right and centre; if you have chosen this person, stick with them, there must of been something in the beginning, walk away from temptation, see it through, and persevere with a little faith to go down for good measure!
