I’ve been married for 23 years.

Correction, there was a brief interruption in service.

We actually got divorced once for about a year. And then we got remarried. (Thank you Covid Lockdown).

So right there should tell you that I am probably not the person you should be coming to for flawless-marriage advice.

On the other hand, maybe it makes me exactly the person you should ask. Because we’ve done the “for better or worse” thing, decided at one point that the worse was winning, called the whole thing off…and then looked at each other and basically said:

“Okay, wanna try that again?”

We did.

Our second wedding was at the courthouse. Nothing elaborate. Just us, standing in front of a judge, with both of our nearly adult children, getting legally remarried to the person we’d already been legally married to before.

At the end of the ceremony, the judge looked at my husband and said, “Have fun with the new wife.”

My husband, without missing a beat, replied, “Thanks, but this is an old one.”

Honestly, that story probably tells you more about our marriage than anything else I could write. Because if there is one thing I have learned after all these years together, it’s this:

You better have a sense of humor. A really good one. Because marriage is ridiculous.

You’re taking two completely separate human beings with different personalities, habits, families, opinions, bodily functions, and preferred thermostat settings and telling them: “Okay. Now live together forever.”

What could possibly go wrong?

And when you’ve been together as long as we have, you’ve gone through some shit together.

There have been wonderful years.

There have been hard years.

There was even a year where we decided not being married sounded like a solid plan.

Spoiler: we reconsidered.

And I think that’s an important part of our story. We aren’t still together because everything has always been easy, because it hasn’t.

We aren’t still together because we’ve never hurt each other, gotten angry, screwed up, or wondered what the hell we were doing.

We’re together because somewhere along the way, after everything we’d been through, we chose each other again, and through all of it, we’ve laughed. Sometimes at each other. Sometimes at ourselves. Usually at completely inappropriate moments.

And I genuinely think that’s part of how we’ve made it this far.

Because life gets heavy. Marriage, bills, jobs, raising kids, losing people, and getting older..…all heavy.

Watching your bodies change, your parents age, your children grow up, and your carefully made plans occasionally burst into flames is heavy.

You need something that makes it lighter. For us, that’s humor. It’s being in the middle of an argument and one of us saying something so stupid that the other person starts laughing. Which is infuriating when you’re trying to remain properly pissed off.

It’s having inside jokes that would make absolutely no sense to another human being. (*Cupcakes)

It’s one word that can make both of you lose it because of something that happened seventeen years ago.

It’s knowing exactly how to make your spouse laugh when they’ve had a terrible day.

It’s roasting each other mercilessly while also knowing there are certain things we would never joke about because those things actually hurt. That’s an important distinction.

After all these years, you know where all the buttons are. The trick is knowing which ones are fun to push and which ones you leave the hell alone.

But now we’re entering an entirely new phase of marriage.

Middle age…which comes with a whole new set of experiences.

Perimenopause.
Aches and pains.
Reading menus from increasingly ridiculous distances.
Walking into rooms and having absolutely no idea why we’re there.

My hormones have decided they’re running the household now, my internal thermostat is broken, my emotions occasionally arrive without consulting me first, and our sex life now requires scheduling, supplies, favorable atmospheric conditions, and the extraordinary coincidence of both of us being in the mood at the same time. (that’s a whole other post)

If we couldn’t laugh about this stuff, we’d be screwed.

Well…given the aforementioned scheduling problem, perhaps “screwed” was a poor choice of words. But you get the point.

I don’t think keeping a marriage going means you’re deliriously happy with each other every second. We are living proof that marriage can get really fucking hard.

Sometimes you work through it. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get divorced and then decide, You know what? I think I’d like that one back.

Relationships are weird.

There are days when I look at my husband and think, I love you more than anyone in this world.

There are other days when I hear him chewing from across the room and wonder whether 23 years will actually turn into 24.

Both can be true.

That’s marriage.

Love isn’t always romantic dinners and anniversary posts.

Sometimes love is picking up someone’s prescription, it’s making dinner because the other person had a shitty day, it’s sitting together saying absolutely nothing.

Sometimes it’s knowing when your spouse needs a hug, and sometimes it’s knowing that a hug would be a terrible idea and you should probably just put down the chocolate and slowly back away.

You learn each other. And then you keep learning each other.

Because the man I originally married isn’t exactly the man I remarried. And neither of those men is exactly the man I’m married to today.

I’m not the same woman either.

Thank God.

We grew up. We changed. We screwed things up…we figured things out.

We screwed things up badly enough to get divorced, and then somehow, we figured out that maybe our story wasn’t finished yet.

So we started another chapter, and somewhere along the way, we learned that marriage isn’t about finding one perfect version of each other and staying that way forever.

It’s about continuing to find each other through all the different versions.

Boyfriend and girlfriend…Husband and wife…Mom and Dad…Young and broke…Ex-husband and ex-wife (that was an interesting season)…Husband and wife again…Slightly less young and still occasionally broke…Middle-aged…And so on…

Eventually, we’ll probably be two old people sitting next to each other complaining that the television is too quiet while refusing to admit that neither of us can hear.

And I hope we’re still laughing.

Actually, I’m pretty sure we will be.

Because after everything we’ve been through, I’ve learned that sometimes the person who can make you laugh when absolutely nothing is funny is exactly the person you want beside you when life gets hard.

So I don’t know the secret to a successful marriage.

Hell, technically I’ve already had one unsuccessful marriage, it just happened to be with the same guy.

But I do know this: Marry someone you love. Marry someone you trust. Marry someone who will stand beside you when everything goes to shit…and if things fall apart, whatever happens next is yours to figure out.

But if you happen to find your way back to each other? Make sure it’s someone who can stand in front of a judge, immediately after marrying you for the second time, and refer to you as:

“an old one.”

Because for the love of God…marry someone who makes you laugh.

You’re going to need it.