Today is our 8th Wedding Anniversary.

We feel like wearing an “I survived the 7 Year Itch” t-shirt.

We’re in a better, happier, more comfortable, more stable, more loving, deeper, more affectionate, more real, place now than we ever have been. At least I feel that way.

The 7 year itch was like a journey into marriage war, but at least we finally worked some stuff out (where previously we’d been applying Band-Aids).

The overwhelming feeling on this anniversary is Phew. We made it. Thank God (literally) we’re on the up-side.

Honey, I’m so glad we struggled through and worked it out. I’m having a lot more fun being married these days. I can honestly say I’m happily married.

As my friend, Jen from Jlogged.com put it, We found our sweet spot.

We’ll be celebrating on Friday when we go on vacation for 2 weeks! We’ll be heading to Utah to see my family and San Francisco to BlogHer, where I’ll be speaking.

I can’t say enough about our experience with Vow, a marriage education initiative sponsored by the federal government to help couples find a way to be happy.

I also can’t say enough about having more money. They say money can’t buy happiness. But, in my experience, it can buy a lot of marital peace. Certainly, there can be no marital harmony if you’re not on the same financial page.

Visit the Vow website if your marriage has some issues that need resolving.

Visit Dave Ramsey’s website to get on the same $$$ page.

Read Save a Marriage – Stop Sharing.

Photo Source: Jennifer Lea, Jlogged.com

Post from: Blisstree

8th Wedding Anniversary

Happily Ever After was a damn lie. No one rides off into the sunset. The days are not all rosy and loving and no one is spending hours every day lying in bed telling each other how wonderful the other is. It’s just not the reality of marriage.

The reality is this:

Half (50%) of Americans get divorced.

Statistically, it’s probably accurate to assume that ALL married people find marriage challenging and MOST married people are sometimes unhappy in their marriage and EVERY married person sometimes does something imperfect.

In fact, the state of marriage is in such trouble that the federal government is now trying to help people stay married by providing marriage education courses free of charge regardless of income. You know if anti-welfare George W. Bush is providing free social services to try to help people avoid divorce - marriage is having some serious problems.

 All the romantic movies and fairy tales and expectations were simply a load of crap. 

Marriage is this: very hard work.

If you consider staying miserably married a failure in itself, and I do, then way more than the majority of us are failing at it.

Jon & Kate’s marriage is a resounding success (statistically they’ve beaten the average divorce rate of multiples parents, which is two or three times higher than for parents of single children) and it’s a shame that anyone’s marriage would be so highly criticized. Holding on to our absurd fairy-tale ideals about what marriage should be like isn’t going to help anyone’s marriage.

Pretending that marriage is as easy as happily ever after never helps anyone’s children grow up to be good at the difficult job of being a spouse. It is better that their 8 children are exposed to the reality of the hard work, conflict and conflict-resolution that goes into a marriage, so they will have a clearer understanding of marriage before they do it expecting happily ever after.

What criticism of their marriage does is dismiss all the hard work and trial and error that a successful marriage, like Jon & Kate’s, involves.

You know what I think? I think if you’re critical of other people’s marriage – well, you’re probably critical of your own spouse. And criticism is a sure marriage killer.

Post from: Blisstree

J&K+8 = Marriage Reality