When you dream about getting married, you tend to do so with rose-colored glasses on (at least I did). Then you get married and realize that, while it isn’t all hearts and roses all the time, it can still be pretty darn funny.
You dream about waking up next to that sweet someone every morning…but you don’t realize that neither of you is used to sharing a bed with someone, so you frequently wake each other up because your morning stretches jab the other person. Elbow to the eye socket, head bonk, hand over the face, you get the idea.
You dream about eating dinner together every night…but you don’t realize that you two have totally different ideas about when dinner time actually is. Then one of you gets pregnant and either eats all the time or is nauseous beyond all belief, so sometimes you just watch the other one eat.
You dream about being able to do his laundry (I’m stereotyping here, okay?) and be a sweet, doting wife…but you don’t realize how often someone (we’re both guilty here) leaves things in their pockets and nearly ruins entire loads of clothes.
You dream of being able to watch movies together at night and just cuddle up…but you don’t realize you have very different tastes in movies and some nights it takes nearly as long to pick a movie as it does to watch it!
You dream of sleeping in and being lazy on Saturday mornings together…but you don’t realize that adulthood and married life means that your internal clock believes that sleeping in = 30 minutes past when you would have to get up during the work week.
You dream of falling asleep in each other’s arms…but you don’t realize that you have different ideas of ‘bedtime’, especially when one of you is pregnant. Instead you learn to love falling asleep to the sound of video games and apparently make unconscious purr-like noises when the other spouse comes to bed.
Marriage may not be everything I had hoped and dreamed of, but in many, many ways it is more. Marriage is stretching me and growing me, but it is also making me laugh and keeping me humble.
What about you, dear readers, how is the reality of marriage different than your dreams of it?
