Me & Him

I tend to only post sporadically about my husband because I mean for my blog to be about my own personal journey, but today I want to share a little about him.

Marriage isn't always peachy.
Social media shows us all the beauty in peoples lives, but you won't find the pictures or posts about everyone's struggles.
That, we all keep to ourselves.
Sometimes, there is nothing more than a name change and some pictures of a past life seem to disappear and the slate is wiped clean.
That's the beauty of social media.
It is whatever we want it to be.

But I've found, that there is something endearing about the ugly bits of marriage.
The parts that we keep out of the limelight, and to ourselves.
We hash it out, and learn a little, and still decide that being together is the best choice.
And in some cases, it's not.

And no matter the outcome, we're stronger because of it.

My husband is, what I might call, an old-fashioned man.
A "man's man", if you will.

He's not too in touch with his feelings, but he knows when it's important to reach down deep and figure things out.
Sometimes, because I've said, "figure your sh*t out."
He is, very, very clever.
He is the rock, where I am allowed to be soft and emotional.
We fight, and sometimes say mean things to each other.
Reeeeeally mean things.
We are far, far from a perfect couple, but we choose to remain on the same team because, truthfully, it's generally a super cool team to be on.
And every day, I'm glad he's stuck with me.

I was having a bit of anxiety over my oldest kid starting grade two this past year.
I know it's not a big deal, really, and I'm not upset because she's growing up so fast, (she is, for the record), it's that in a short time she will be bringing homework home and I'm nervous for the day I won't be able to help her with math because it was never a strong subject for me.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I love the fact that my husband will take great pleasure in re-figuring out how to do the math with her, as well as the other two, when the time comes.
I just said pleasure, as in, he is probably already excited for this.
My partner is going to fill in the gaps.
We will figure things out, together.

Even on the days I tell him I want to break up, because I'm hormonal and he forgot to stop at Costco, so now I have to go tomorrow, with three kids because he has a business lunch at a fancy restaurant with some big wigs, and it's just not fair.
Even then, I choose him.

There are days when he is not my favourite person.
Many days.
We have three little kids, and we have to coordinate schedules and try to make sure everyone is doing enough of the things they want to do, so there's minimal complaining when we have to do the things they're not so fond of doing.
With five lives being lead, under one roof, and of the five lives, only two of which are by grownups, that leaves a lot of chores to do, and a lot of parenting.
We're tired.
All the time.  Like, we don't even talk about how tired we are, because it's just simply assumed that neither one of us got three or four straight hours of sleep, in the past six years, and we're OK with it now.
We created this life together, and that's simply one of the unfortunate consequences.
The rest of the consequences are so, so awesome.

We make sure to take time for each other, and try to reconnect on a regular basis so that we're simply not tag-teaming the kids while we go do our own things.
We ask for help so we can go on dates.
We went on three dates over one weekend, simply because we had sitters and we need to take advantage sometimes!
Those three dates were "banked" for the weeks that will go by with no dates!

My guy is incredible, and loves his family fiercely and all those years ago, when I met him, I could never have dreamed that he'd be the man he is today, and that we would be leading this wild and crazy life together.
I could never have imagined that after a decade, I still sometimes stop him mid-sentence to lay some sugar on him.
When I met him, I distinctly remember thinking, "Yea, this one could be fun for a little while!"
I wasn't interested in marriage or kids.  And neither was he.
And yet, here we are, ten years later, and we are pretty darn great together.