Why It Works
Now in asking that last question, lets come to a very clear understanding. Lucas and I are VERY passionate people. We do things passionately. We fight passionately too!!!!! We are both oldest children and want to be in charge (along with our oldest child too :) ). We far from have a perfect marriage. We do things that bug each other, sometimes even on purpose. We have times that we just don't get a long and some times don't even want to get along. Thankfully this isn't most of time, but probably a lot more of the time than I want to admit to anyone. :)
So what does keep us together? The conclusion we came to is we LOVE being together. One of the best things about this weekend is that we got to spend the majority of the weekend together and a lot of driving time, just talking to one another, which we love doing! I can't count the number of nights that we have gone to sleep WAY too late because we just couldn't stop talking.
We are best friends. We do need other friends, very much so, especially him, but we are best friends.
As I think more about it and think about what we have told others that have asked, there is more too. Neither of us are easy to live to with, for many reasons. Both of us are also far from perfect. We also have lots of baggage we came with, just from being human and the challenges that life has given us. We also have children that add to the complexities of marriage.
We both work on ourselves A LOT! We read books, listen to to speakers and podcasts and TED talks. I have a mentor. He talks things through with good friends who act as counselors for him and he for them. We both journal and I have filled quite a few self-help workbook journal type books as I work through my baggage. We also talk with each other, a lot.
We work through our feelings and try and figure out what is really causing our frustrations; is it really the other person that is causing the issue or it is something I am believing in my own head? That helps our marriage. The more we understand ourselves, the more able we are to work together, especially during really busy or really stressful times. (We probably usually don't start our fights that way, it's usually how we end up figuring them out though...after we have exhausted a passionate disagreement.)
MOM's have their challenges. ALL marriages have challenges but this challenge does come with its very own unique things. Understanding that all marriages have their issues helps me keep in perspective ours. If I left this marriage because he is gay and brings those challenges to our marriage, I would be just trading for a different challenge. It is not possible to not have challenges in this life.
So, why is this challenge worth it to me? I have an phenomenal husband! He is loving, and kind, he makes me laugh and we love laughing and talking together, he is an amazing dad, he loves people and especially helping people, and I could probably fill pages and pages of the attributes he has that makes it worth it.
Sometimes he is a jerk, just out and out jerk! Those moments, it's not worth it. Sometimes we just aren't getting along and probably for stupid reasons, and in those moments it's not. Sometimes, I see how much he platonic-ly loves another man and it makes me question myself. Why would he want to be with me, a woman, who is very much not a man, and who is very imperfect and who at that moment is probably not feeling like a good wife at all? That deep platonic love that he can have for other men though is one of the reasons I love him. That is a gift that he has that I greatly admire and think is wonderful. There are times it doesn't outweigh, but more than the vast majority of the time it does. That is why I think it is worth the challenges that him being gay brings to our marriage.
What I haven't talked about is me. I bring just as many challenges to our marriage as he does! We marry a person who is going to balance us; who brings out in us what we need and want. It is wonderful and can be amazing and easily seen as we are a better person because we are with them! The opposite is also true. They also can bring out what isn't the best in us and it can feel in-your-face and it hurts and we have to step up and be more than we were. It forces us to improve and work on ourselves or it can pull the relationship apart. At least for our marriage it has been an ebb and flow of all of that, including the relationship being pulled at for a time. I think all good marriages probably do that to some extent because it keep you balanced and always working to be a better person and couple.
Another huge reason our marriage works is because we are willing to be vulnerable with each other. To tell each other pretty much anything. It took a lot of time and a lot of trust and a lot of testing the waters at being just a little vulnerable and then a little more and so forth. It took both of us willing to listen without judgment (or at least without visible judgment). I don't know many relationships that are as vulnerable as ours. That is one thing I love about our marriage.
The biggest thing of all about our marriage is that we have put our trust in God. Every time we didn't think we could do it anymore, for whatever reason, God has encouraged us to keep trying. To just trust a little longer that it will work. It would be difficult for a time, but then things would be better than they had been before and our marriage and us have grown from those times.
What I have learned, from being with Lucas the last 18 years is that I have become so much better of a person because of him. I have loved watching him learn and grow and become the man he is today. I married a very different man than who I am currently married too. In some ways he is still the same but in many ways he is so much more. I wouldn't trade it!
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