My friend got married a few weeks before Christmas. During a later conversation, after I issued my additional post-wedding congratulations, I asked a question without much thought. ‘So where are you guys spending Christmas?’
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Keeping it one hundred, her initial silence — or her eventual response — didn’t surprise me, ‘Oh no, I can’t spend Christmas without mum and the family. We always spend it together.’ I laughed. ‘Well, you are a married woman. You have multiple families now.’
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Fortunately, I don’t celebrate Christmas, so the ‘whose house are you spending it’ conversation never created issues for me.
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Spending Christmas with a partner’s family is not that big of a deal (to some), but the scenario helps to highlight the naivety of newlyweds. It shows how many things sound inconsequential until you are married.
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Responsibility is one of most unpredicatble words in the marital dictionary. Commitmet comes with an expanding and evolving attitude toward responsiblity. You can’t consider a partner without considering their responsibilities. We marry a person and their circumstances.
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Those responsibilities might one day become yours. Starting a relationship at uni made me realise that relationships flourish inside bubbles. When you have the luxury to float around in love, you almost forget that the rest of the world still exists, but it does.
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In-laws want to see their daughters on family holidays; partners still have to observe their faith (during Ramadan, my intimacy nosedives). All the rules still apply.
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We are so excited about the big picture (weddings living together, honeymoons etc.), and we neglect the small details. They become minor brush strokes on the larger canvas. We forget that without those strokes, there is no final image.
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How do we know what you are painting without the pencil sketches to trace? Your husband wakes up at 5 am for the gym every morning. That’s fine until the sound of his protein shake blending becomes your new alarm clock.
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When I still worked full-time in retail, I would beg my wife to come and see me on the weekend, but Sunday was her designated church day, so I only ever got half a weekend of her time.
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As a man raised to try and navigate the world by himself, I struggled with compromise. It’s more of a skill than it is a choice. It took time to recognise that my perspective is not the only perspective that matters.
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That not every victory is worth the battle fought to attain it. You can be right in the wrong way. I still need to find out where my friend ended on December 25th. I’m sure the newlyweds found a suitable compromise and learned a lesson about responsibility.
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