I married the wrong person.
Say what!?!?!
Yup, my husband is, in a lot of ways, the wrong man for me.
I'm a big, loud, extreme extrovert.
He's a mild mannered. midlevel introvert.
I feel and understand hundreds of nuanced emotions.
He's got, maaaaybe, a dozen emotions.
I'm an enthusiastic teacher and creative writer.
He's a buttoned down software developer.
I'm from a family that talked openly about tough topics like sex, drugs, mental health, and the general messiness of life.
He's from a conservative, formal, and private family.
My mom almost always worked.
His mom mostly stayed home
I'm a first generation middle class woman who is used to counting the pennies in my bank account.
He's from a solid middle class family where money wasn't usually a source of worry .
I'm the daughter of a Jesus-movement- house-church father and a lapsed Mormon mother who both agreed that personally knowing God was just as good as (maybe even BETTER than) going to church.
He was born and raised attending conservative evangelical churches.
We are REALLY different, sometimes painfully so. These glaring disparities have been the main sources of conflict in our marriage. Whenever one of these differences comes crashing into the forefront, I sometimes wonder if I could have found a man who was a better fit for me. Maybe I could have married a man with a more developed emotional vocabulary. Maybe I could have married a man who thought more deep, soulful, poetic thoughts. Maybe I could have married a man from a more similar family and financial background. (I'm sure my husband wonders sometimes if he could have, maybe, found a better match than me too) Maybes are dangerous to a marriage. That's why I am so thankful for this very important piece of advice we received when we were in premarital counseling.
Everybody Marries the Wrong Person. Isn't it that the most pessimistic things you've ever heard? At face value, I agree that it's terrible advice. There were some men that I dated before my husband who were not just wrong for me, they were BAD for me. Marriage would have been a giant mistake for those relationships.
Marrying my husband was, however, a wise and healthy choice...but...it wasn't a PERFECT choice. For instance, we have had seasons when we argued about our family roles. We have cried about hurtful miscommunication. We have had the same intense financial discussions over and over and over again...and gotten nowhere. Aaaand...I may or may not have locked him out of our bedroom when he forgot Mother's Day this year. So, I may have done my best to choose a good spouse, but inevitably our idiosyncrasies and character flaws caused conflict, confusion, and pain.
At it's heart, the Everybody Marries the Wrong Person tenet is designed to help married people frame their differences in the reality that ALL people are imperfect. ALL. Every person comes into marriage with diverse life experience and incongruent expectations. Every person has the capacity to be a little selfish and relationally lazy. All humans are a complex mix of awesome and awful. So, my husband is not perfect for me....but neither is Thatguy Overthere. Thatguy and I would have a whole new list of delightful things that make our relationship challenging. Trying to find a better match outside of the marriage would only be trading one set of complications for another set of complications with a different person.
That's why I am SUPER glad that we decided to base our decision to get married on the things we had in common on a heart and soul level. So, we may differ in our upbringings, financial philosophies, or church culture, but at the core of our beings, our partnership makes sense.
We BOTH love Jesus and desire to do our best to know Him and serve Him faithfully.
We BOTH value community, friendship, and family over career and financial gain.
We BOTH value authenticity and honesty.
We BOTH value humility, kindness. and generosity.
We BOTH agree that a parent's job is to raise children who will grow into good adults.
Knowing that, at the heart of our marriage, we are headed in the same direction, makes it easier to overlook our more superficial differences. Knowing that, at the center of our relationship, we have good and honorable intentions makes it easier to forgive offenses. Knowing that we're both imperfect, messy, complex, contradictory, human beings, just like everybody else, makes it easier to keep our hearts from wandering over to Maybe.
(Disclaimer: Sometimes people find themselves in toxic and abusive marriages...this blog post is NOT intended to apply to those sorts of circumstances. If you are in a physically or mentally unsafe relationship I urge you to find a safe place and to enlist the help of trusted mental health professionals to walk with you through your individual situation.)
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