SPF Infinity

I have been married for 235 days. I have found that when you are engaged and newly married people like to offer a lot of words of wisdom about marriage. You know, “never go to bed angry” and “marriage is work” or “marriage is a choice you have to make every day.” And then there are those couples who are deliriously happy because they married their perfect match, or because they “work on their happiness every day.”
My words of wisdom can be summed up using the tag line from an old MTV show, “you think you know, but you have no idea.” I thought I knew. I thought I knew my husband good, bad, and ugly. I thought I knew myself. I thought that since we were already living together our life wouldn’t change much. I thought I knew what marriage would be like, but I had no idea. And 235 days in to it I still feel like I have no idea.
It turns out that marriage, for me, has been kind of like a sunburn (bear with me). I love the sun, I want to be in it all day. I know that I need to wear sunscreen but sometimes I am brazen and feel like I don’t need to be careful or protect myself from the sun. Sometimes I get so used to having my husband around, and expecting forgiveness at every turn I am brazen with him also. I say things I don’t mean, or do things without talking to him first. Because he loves me, so we can figure it out, right?
And then after too much time in the sun, it starts to wear you out. Marriage wears you with the best intentions. The love between you and your spouse is a blessing and a curse. It reveals all of the freckles you try to hide, the parts of you that aren’t so pretty. You can’t hide from your marriage. It will find you, it makes you deal with the things you have tried to hide, things that are painful, or feel too big to be fixed. Once the ugliness is out there, it is easy to feel defensive, feel like your head and your heart are too messed up to work on, like it is the other person’s fault for picking and peeling the sunburn until it is raw and painful. Marriage reveals it. And then there is no going back. You have to own it, figure out what IT is and then figure out how to not let it destroy you and your relationship. Instead, how to create a life and love that is richer for the flaws.
Even though what love has revealed isn’t pretty, it is amazing to be loved in a way that touches you on every level. It is real, and genuine, it touches your core and changes you. I get so frustrated when I feel like everyone’s marriage is happy and sunshine-y and we are the only ones still figuring it out. I am convinced that this is part of an act, and even though you’re smiling in all of the photos you post of you and your spouse, on the other side of the camera you are tearing each other down and creating yourselves again. I am convinced that every relationship is like this. We smile for the camera to show the world that we are still here, still working on it, still putting aloe on our partner’s sunburn.