Weddingbee Blog

The other day on twitter I got a request to share my newlywed wisdom with the soon-to-be married crowd. I sort of laughed and thought, “how the hell do I give advice or even respond? What should I say?”

So instead, I said nothing. And if it was you that asked, I’m sorry I didn’t respond. It was probably spam anyway and I’m thinking way too hard about this.

But the truth is, I never have had a good example of a healthy marriage in my life. OK, maybe never is too strong of a word. My parents were married, but then divorced. As a kid, everything in their relationship seemed happy and good to me until one day it wasn’t. The demise began (at least from my 8-year-old perspective) when my parents started spending less and less time together; one would always make an excuse to work late, or have dinner plans with friends, and I knew the end was near. I even called my dad at work to ask him if he and my mom were getting a divorce. He said we’d talk about it when they both got home from work. Since I already told you they were divorced, there is no surprise as to how the conversation went when they got home. And then about seven years later, my mom remarried. 10 years after that, she was divorced. This is in no way a post to rip on my mom, and if she reads it I hope she doesn’t take it that way. I don’t believe anyone should stay in a relationship with a partner that is unwilling to work on your relationship if things are miserable.

But the reason I’m writing about this, and that the timing of the question on twitter was so interesting, is because my mom is getting married again this weekend.

Typically when you think about giving advice to someone that is about to be married, you think about a young-ish girl getting married for the first time. You don’t often think about the more seasoned woman who is headed down the aisle for a second or third time. But as it were, that’s how things are in my life right now. And, it’s weird. Participating in a parent’s wedding does not conjure up all the typical thoughts, reactions and responses that being a part of a friend’s wedding does. There is so much more emotion involved with a parent’s wedding. Or at least for me there is. I don’t think it matters how old you are when your parent gets remarried, there is just something…unsettling? strange? about it. Clearly I’m struggling to find the right word.

So, to bring things full circle, if I were to give advice to all the people getting married in the next couple of weeks (or this weekend) it would be to work on your connecting with your partner every day. It’s so easy to get into routines, or ruts, where you only interact superficially. Avoid that if you can.

Reminisce often. Mr. Fro Yo and I talk about the night we met or our wedding day over and over. It always makes us smile and it’s fun to relive.

Don’t ever take each other for granted. I find that I get used to Mr. Fro Yo being around and it’s only when he’s gone that I realize just how much I miss being around him and how much I want him with me. Try to keep that in mind even when your partner is around.

Let the small things go because they don’t matter anymore. We can spend far too long on petty fights and then I get hung up on being right and lose sight of what it was we were even originally fighting about. Then Mr. Fro Yo will say, “You can’t even remember why you’re mad.” And, I’ll laugh because he’s right and he’ll call me a knucklehead or some other term of endearment and we move on.

Maintain your independence. What if we only liked the same things or participated in all the same activities and never introduced each other to new things? How boring. It’s so important to maintain your sense of self. I think you will respect yourself a lot more for it and your partner will respect you more too.

So that’s what I have. We’ve been married for a year now (yay!!) and I am in no way an expert; these are just things I try to keep in mind.

What marriage advice do you have?