No TV in the bedroom is our secret....

Dh and I have been married for 8 1/2 yrs together for 10+. We dont have the perfect or even most extremely functional marriage in the world. If we are under stress, to get anything done we will do it and do it well but with lots of bickering. We bicker and bicker and bicker. We are both cancers, strong tempered and passionate in a lot of things so of course it causes conflict when we are put under stress.

I am not one of those wifes that will say "okay darling you lead the way" and I dont think he would love me if I was like that. Our bickering is part of us. Its part of who we are, it has helped us accomplish everything we have, and has kept us in our toes. I have no deep dark secret or anything I wish to change in our marriage and neither does he. Everything that needed to be taken care of, argued, talked about it, has been done so when it happened. Never go to bed mad stay up and fight.

If you were to observe us from a distance and we were in a stressful situation (be whatever it is..mostly a move/trip) you would think we were on the brinks of divorce but if you were to put up your listening ears and listen more closely or even a bit longer you would realize that under the bickering, we were communicating, getting through to each other, accomplishing whatever task we had at hand and under our bickeriness, you would hear tenderness.

I am not stupid enough to say I have the secret to a perfect marriage. Heck, every couple of years a bomb goes off in our lives, and while the smoke is still settling, we kind of get lost and have our relationship tested over and over again and sometimes it takes us a bit to find each others hands and that period of time is scary. I do like to look of our marriage as a building. Our foundation is strong and sometimes one or two floors might explode and with one of lives very strong bomb, lots of floors might get anihalated and sometimes crack our foundation a bit. But so far thank God our foundation has not turned to dust. After the explosion we quickly rebuild everything and are happy again :)

Lately a lot of our friends are going through divorces. Its extremely sad for us to watch it and to be perfectly honest its scary. In the middle of the night I will stay up and think about it..Why are we able to hold it together and they didnt?? There hasnt been anything special or unique about our marriage. We bicker a lot remember. Some of our friends going through divorces had the type of relationship they could calmly sit down without raising their voices and discuss things. A quiet discussion in this house?? LMFAO..impossible.

In my darkest hrs I will cry and get scared. He is truly my everything. I don't need him to survive but my life is better because of him. I am a better person because of him. Not because he tried to control me or change me, because through his kindness and with all of his patience, he guided me slowly and softly through the right path. I know I have done the same for him. His family this last time, once again told me how good I have been for his life and he has told me numerous times. We take care of each other and want to see each other succeed. And we dont take each other too seriously. I can easily call him a jerk and he will respond with a big grin on his face in the middle of an serious argument and say "Jerk?? Seriously? that is all you can come up with?? Give me something better I know its in there". We will start laughing and through laughter and hiccups I will call him a slimy pathetic creature. More laughter later we wont even remember what the argument was in the first place. Deep down we know we love each other more than anything and there is nowhere else we want to be, than married to each other and doing this together, and we know if there were somewhere else we would rather be for whatever the reason, the other person would hear about it.

He has been so good for me that I of course want this for everyone else. I am not jaded. I believe in love and because even though extremely hard (well it was hard in the beginning now its easy. Even with our bickering its still pretty ,dare I say easy??)
Having just one person truly love you, support you, adore you and want your happiness, sometimes above theirs is such a beautiful thing and I believe everyone should have this. And sometimes on my most zen days, I will even tell you finding that person is lives purpose.

Now dont get me wrong. I joke that he is not my soul mate. I honestly dont know if he is my soul mate or not. To me a soul mate would fit you so perfectly you wouldnt need to argue or even say an unkind word. You would just flow through life in perfect harmony. Your steps would be so matched together and you wouldnt step on each others toes. And because through our marriage, I have stepped on his toes, him on mine, I have said hurtful words to him and him to me that have caused us great pain and also caused us to apologize later on to each other, I dont know if we are soul mates. Maybe we are and I have my definition wrong?? Who knows..

But anyways, many of my friends are asking me what is our secret, when we got married we were told we wouldn't last a yr and we were on a collision course to destruction, and so far we have proved all of our critics wrong. So what is our secret??

After talking about routines and lives, I can honestly say there is 4 things from most of the couples around us that are falling part, that we have done different.

1. Everything gets solved right away. There is no passive aggressiveness around here. I will call him in Afghanistan in the middle of the night to tell him I am not happy with a decision he made. He will wake me up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night to tell me what I did he is not happy with. Nothing has a chance to grow and spread.

2. We rather spend time with each other than anyone else. We know how to have fun together. Don't get me wrong..we also need time apart, we also enjoy our friends and going out with them, but we are each others best friend and we know how to have fun. The fun we enjoy is simple and all over the place, be watching movies, a picnic in the middle of the living room, or reeenacting operation dessert storm on each other with nerf guns.

3. We go to bed together (when he is in country of course). Maybe one night a month insomnia might hit me or him or he might have a game he is wanting to play longer or I might have a book going on that I just cant put down, but 99% of the time we go to bed together at the same time. I think its important.

and last but not least..

4. We dont have a tv in our bedroom. He always wanted one from the time we got together and I was always against one. We never had a tv in our bedroom and now he is thankful we dont have one. Our bedroom is sacred. Its our time together. We are plugged in to technology too much already during our days and not plugged in to each other enough (what I believe is the biggest problem facing this world today), so therefore not having a tv in our bedroom is major. Some of the most fun,interesting conversations we have had was right before we went to sleep. All of our decisions and huge issues have been solved during those talks right before bed. For us is magical.


So one might think this is bs..someone's grandma cousin sister has been married for 55 yrs and they have a tv in their bedroom. Hey more power to them. I am just answering what people have asked me =)


Love A :)