‘so, how is married life?’

i get this question all the time. i am always quick to answer that i love it and i can barely imagine my life before matt. my heart is so full and it’s a joy everyday to unapologetically love another human.

but…there have been some things to get used to. sharing space has never been easy for me. i shared a bedroom my first semester of college and it was so traumatic i vowed to never repeat the experience. i’ve always needed a lot of space, both physically and emotionally. i had a roommate in san francisco who would come into my room {uninvited}, sit on my bed, and talk to me for hours. it drove me insane. 

one time i told my therapist about it, and she was all: ooOOOooo a boundary project! i love boundary projects! {joke’s on her: didn’t work and i fled the city, never to return}.

anyway. living together has a lot of advantages. you get to see each other very frequently without a lot of effort. you get to kiss goodbye before work and goodnight before bed. you don’t have to plan pickups and late-night drop offs. you can go to bed at 10 pm. i am particularly glad we’re married this winter and were dating last winter, because it’s been freezing and i am not about walking to the car when it’s 19 degrees and snowing.

anyway, i wanted to share the biggest things we’ve had to get used to or have been surprised by in these first months of marriage. no one ever tells you this stuff!

sharing a bed.

holy hell. this one is such a catch 22. when you’re dating {and mormon}, all you want to do is romantically fall asleep in each other’s arms. you long for pillow talk and early morning snuggles. it takes you forever to say goodbye as you sweetly whisper sweet nothings at the doorstep {or something like that}.

then you get married and share a queen size bed with a living, breathing, snoring human and you’re like, HUH? matt and i have this running joke because i came back from the bathroom at 2 a.m. one night, and HE WAS ON MY PILLOW. cranky and delirious, i poked him and whined, ‘you’re on my sssiiidddeeeee.’ he grunted, rolled back over and doesn’t remember a thing. i’ve had full conversations with him about elbowing me, rolling over on me and snoring in my ear. he never remembers anything the next morning. it’s hilarious.

the upside is that if you can’t sleep, you have someone to tell you bedtime stories all night long. and if haven’t seen much of each other, you can reconnect {with or without pajamas…amiright?}

your morning routine. 

i guess this is similar to any roommate situation, but i’ve never lived with anyone who had such a similar schedule to me. matt’s alarm goes off at 6:40, and then he snoozes for 10 minutes and gets up at 6:50. At this point, I am awake-ish, but kind of groggy and a little out of it. i fall back asleep until about 7:10, when he gets out of the shower and comes in to get dressed. by this time, i am in no mood to get up and feel discombobulated.

before we lived together, my alarm went off at 6:50 ish and i decided how many snooze buttons i hit. i rarely woke up before my alarm and just kind of moseyed around while i was getting ready. i didn’t speak to another person before i got to work, and quite frankly, that was a service to the community. i am so cranky in the morning and usually just grunt if matt asks me questions/tries to talk to me. he has learned to discern the tone and frequency of my little language and never gets offended if i am less than responsive.

the good thing about being married to your roommate is that they aren’t weird about doing their hair while you’re in the shower. you can leave the door open and roam about in the early am. and you don’t mind them being in your space as much as you did when you lived with a stranger.

eating oreos in bed.

this is less about the oreos and more about the justification of oreos. let me explain.

when you’re single and want to take a pint of ben and jerry’s half-baked fro yo into the bedroom with you, it’s easy to be like: this is totally normal. i am tragically alone and no one will ever love me, so i might as well put away 1000 calories in one sitting. no one’s seeing me naked anytime soon anyway, except my gynecologist, who’s already told me to get on the treadmill. no loss there.

but then you get married, and realize you’re still interested in eating a sleeve of oreos in bed. and you’re like, wait, what? marriage didn’t solve all my problems and my life isn’t perfect? am i actually addicted to sugar?

you realize there are other things in your life that bug you, and you need to find another coping mechanism that doesn’t involve a potential diabetic coma.

which brings me to me next point…

not much changes, relationship-wise. 

i’ve had a few conversations, pretty recently, about people thinking that the reason they’re unhappy is because they are single, and once they married, they’ll be totally satisfied. this is so dangerous.

i had my moments before i married matt where i was unhappy {please see above post, re: oreos} but for the most part, i’ve tried to be satisfied with where my life where it’s at. i followed my heart to san francisco and then salt lake city, all the while hoping to meet someone but trying not to let it get me down if i didn’t. i got my education, landed jobs in my chosen field and made a lot of friends along the way. it takes two happy, satisfied people to make a good relationship work.

as far as our relationship goes, we treat each other the exact same as when we were dating, with a few added very intense invasions of personal space. we try to be kind and considerate, forgiving, gracious and easy going. we talk about much more serious things like bills and babies, but we’ve laid a foundation of communication and understanding that helps us through these heavy moments.

just the other day, matt texted me that his rice cooker pot was scratched, and he ‘wasn’t sure how it happened.’ i was so touched that he gave me the benefit of the doubt that maybe it wasn’t me {who else would it have been? the fairy that does our dishes?} and gently reminded me that it can’t be washed with the rough side of the sponge. i immediately confessed that i was sure it was me being on auto pilot while doing dishes and that i was sorry. he didn’t make a big deal of it at all, and it made me feel like i was more important than his rice cooker {it’s a very nice rice cooker. it speaks korean} i feel like those small kindnesses are the day-to-day things that keep you crazy in love. i kind of always want to think of him as my boyfriend, so we’re always on our ‘best behavior.’

and there you have it, folks! we’re a quarter of the way through our first year of marriage and doing great.

xoxo,

cait