What Makes A Modern Marriage?

I don't have the magic ingredients to mix and create a successful union.  I am a three time "offender" down the marital aisle.  I joke that the third was the charm, and thirteen years later we still like to hang out together, have sex, and share both our triumphs and failures.  Is it "perfect?"  Fuck no.

Lisa "Vagi" and #3 (March 30, 2002)

 

 

A friend and blog "addict" sent me a link to Food Blogger, Phyllis Grant's, "Dash and Bella" that relates cooking and life adventures with her two children.  Her post from February of this year, "I Know a Mama Who," put reality on screen of what I suspected as our current condition of  "Modern Moms and Wives.". 

http://dashandbella.blogspot.ca/2015/02/i-know-mama-who_23.html

 

It is honest and provoking and is the contributions of ten women and 100's of emails exchanged.  While I could connect with their "confessions" it left me still wondering; how do marriages survive in our modern age?

 

My partner and I are both driven, opinionated, stubborn and independent.  How the hell have we managed to keep our shit together for thirteen years?  Those years were busy - two kids (to add to the one that I brought with me), five houses, three cities, two countries and a few jobs in the mix.  We hit our rocky patch (Titanic in disaster) a few years ago, and separation was the main course served most evenings.   

 

It is very difficult when you really don't like the one you are with, to bring yourself back to that day of promise and hope and love.  It is almost impossible to think that you can do it alone, we agreed to counselling.  We were lucky to have someone that "reconnected" us and led us back to that day in March of 2002.  You have to let ego and ambition go and let yourself be vulnerable to the other person - not an easy feat in our times.

 

I hear my mother constantly in my head, "Never count on a man." She never finished high school, did not have the opportunity for higher education and was a very dedicated wife and mother.  I don't think she ever had the life she really wanted.  Those words made me strong and very apprehensive to completely "let myself go" into love and relationships.  That inability to have a complete loss of self is what all of us in modern relationships suffer from.  We cannot give in to the other person completely, without hesitation and fear. 

 

While I don't believe I can give a valid opinion as to what caused our "wrinkle" to smooth out and continue our journey together as a couple.   I can reflect on how our society functions today and that our sense of entitlement and perfection needs to cease.  We need love in our lives, we need to be valued and comforted, and that, I think are the key ingredients in this mixing bowl of modern marriage. 

 

Much love to all of you and a thank you to Phyllis Grant and her fearless contributors! xo vagi