This section of the blog will be a personal one today.
My husband and I were blessed with the best news we could ever receive at the end of 2011, as the future was looking grimm. We are expecting our first child! Now, sure we all get excited about babies, but what is most exciting is that we conquered my ever lingering infertility. That alone is a whole different story. In short, science was there to assist and provided us with a blessing we were keeping our hopes up for but also understood the reality. We are overcome with joy and excitement as we move forward into another chapter of our lives.
My most amazing husband and I are approaching our 5th wedding anniversary this year (2012) as well as our 11th year together. Here is what you might applaud at, we are high school sweethearts! I get the question a lot, how do you do it? Are you bored? You know, for a little while there things were... 'things'. It wasn't until some real reality set in that I realized, 'things' needed to change. So in short, no we are not bored, we are fun and loving. How do we do it? Keep things 'fresh', as some may say, we find new things to do together. We are what society classifies as 'young', we are the under 30 professionals that own a home and a vehicle, who may or may not be responsible. Well let me tell you, we certainly have our immature moments and our irresponsible times, but THAT ladies and gents is how we do it. We giggle at immature jokes, we go play mini golf, we still go to movies all while being dedicated professionals and mature 'adults' by 'paying our bills' and 'living in the real world'. Common people, let's get something straight here, WE ALL live in the 'real world', just at different levels, take a step back and have a look!
You know what really gets me is when couples refer to 'freshening up the marriage', it almost always refers to sex! Why is that?!!! Let's discuss that! S E X! (Yes, my mother reads my blog, but she also understands that I am probably one of the most open and outspoken people she knows. I don't think anything surprises her anymore after 26 years). I can 100% vouch that when your relationship is happy and healthy with a little bit of heated discussion here and there, with an added touch of freshness from including some fun activities (outside the bedroom), those activities in the bedroom will 'freshen' up on their own! So quit focusing on the fact your marriage is boring because the SEX is dull, your marriage is boring because you have let it become as such! Instead of sitting your ass on the couch every night after work to watch the same damn shows, make a plan to cook dinner together or go for a jog, hell go mini golfing! Even if you are 60 years old! Get on it people! Rediscover why you were so excited to marry your spouse! After 11 years together, I still look at my hubby and fall in love all over again! I still feel that 'magic'. Are you jealous?! Yes? GOOD! You should be! Take this and use it as motivation! Rediscover that feeling you once felt! I do it every morning I wake up now and I cannot wait to add a little one to our relationship to share the love.
One way to really ensure the 'freshen up the relationship' is effective, is to have an open line of communication between the two of you. My Mom has always told me, marry someone you love to talk to because communication is key (or something to that effect), let me tell you this cannot be more true! By 'talking' I don't just mean, 'how was your day, blah blah blah'. I mean EFFECTIVELY communicating. For example, we have a shared calendar in which we enter in anything that either of us may have going on, this way, we are effectively communicating our schedules. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Effectively communicating, means learning to express how your feeling without pointing blame to fighting fairly. I suggest looking up a few tads of info to help you out. Here is one I enjoyed: http://www.familydynamics.net/Communication.htm
Now combined with all this, let's touch a bit on one of the leading causes of stress in a relationship as well as one of those 'things' that cause relationships to come to an end... FINANCES. Ok, how many of you just had rapid heart palpitations. Why are earth are you FREAKING out? I know why, because here are a few things your thinking:
1. Ok, we track financially but ultimately have no idea what we are spending, we are nearly short every month on rent/mortgage and any time it is discussed it turns into a HUGE fight so we just avoid it.
2. Sure we have a budget, but we DO NOT follow it, it becomes frustrating and the fight ensues, so we just do what we need to survive.
3. OMG! We live pay cheque to pay cheque, what finances.
4. Finances? What are those? (Yes, because you simply do not discuss it and if your in this category, likely you have separate accounts anyways).
5. He/She handles it all, I have no idea how it works, I just bring in money.
6. We have so much debt, we are never going to get out.
Alright, 6 reasons is enough for why your heart may be going at a rapid pace at the moment. I don't candy coat so get used to this as I briefly touch base on finances. Now, I am in no way an expert of such nor do I have any accounting background, nor does my husband. I can tell you that we have experienced each and every one of these feelings during our married life. Where are we now, you ask, well, we still have our bit of debts but they are good debts. These good debts consistent of a mortgage, a car, a student loan. Investments in daily living. We live by a budget (which is in no way easy at times), but this budget has allowed us to make investments, to save for our retirement, to save for vacations, holidays, home renovations and the like. Not to mention, we have been able to purchase big items for our little one by CASH! No one knows the word CASH any more. At first, I handled the finances and now hubby is handling them. Soon, with the baby arriving we will have shared responsibilities as to alleviate pressure on a single sole. You are all thinking and how on earth does this work? Well with a mix of keeping our marriage 'fresh', and effectively communicating, we can hash out finances and get it figured in next to no time now, we are on the same page and do our best to understand where the others ideas may be coming from. It is not something that creates us large amounts of distress simply because we know that as a team, we are stronger together. Now, don't get me wrong, there are still the occasional tiffs as we work through this at times and if there are, we walk away from it and try again the next day (on scheduled time).
Your next question, "how bad could it have been if you do not fight about it"? Trust me, there were fights to be had, it was like sticking two strays in a cardboard box with the lid closed. Where was it getting us?! No where. We were in debt to a place we could not even look at our numbers. It was just putting us farther in. We finally realized we needed to devise a plan, TOGETHER. I mean really, it would take novels to express how we did it, what we did and how we didn't allow such topic to ruin our marriage BUT we won't get there. In all honesty, when things got really bad, we turned to Gail Vaz-Oxlade from the hit TV series, "Till Debt Do Us Part". I suggest you start there, I will leave the info from her to you to read. This truly was our savior and continues to be to date. Now we do use her budget system on her website but tweaked it to make it suit our lifestyle (for example, we now pay for Christmas gifts in CASH every year, the majority of our transactions are cash, we live off of cash as opposed to using plastic). Check this out and save yourself the struggle! http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/
Are you seeing the difference already? Are you visualizing the life you could have? Are you finally seeing a smile emerge on your face? Most importantly, are you feeling the difference you could make in your life? If so, do not wait until tomorrow! Start now, tomorrow may be too late!
Lastly, I want to leave you with this random thought that has made a significant change in my life in the past few months (despite my growing abdomen):
Our spouses get sick of hearing our complaints about our bodies, our constant criticisms and our sighs when we look in the mirror. Again, as my Mom always told me, "If you have time to whine about it, you have time to do something about it". Exercise does wonders and so does eating well. I guarantee while your 'freshening up that marriage', your bound to look at yourself differently as well as be encouraged to want to exercise more and tone up that already gorgeous body. Kick yourself in gear people, be confident and smile. Life is too short.
With that I leave you today to improve your life more than you ever thought possible. Smile while your doing it, as a smile is contagious and you never know who is watching.
xoxo
