I’ve been married for seven years now, and Real Talk — there are days where I feel like I’m the luckiest woman alive to be married to my husband and then there are days (A LOT of days) where he drives me nuts.

Essentially, women all want the same things… to be loved, respected and treated like the queens we are (can I get an Amen?)! If our needs are met, and we are happy we will go above and beyond to make our husbands happy. Sounds simple right, but for some odd reason, this thing called life always has a rude way of showing us otherwise.

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Early on in our marriage Bini and I were faced with so many struggles. From the outside we seemed like the perfect couple- beautiful children, beautiful home, both had good jobs, came from good families and had the perfect fairytale wedding for the high school sweethearts. It looked like an amazing life, but we were struggling because we kept putting our own selfish needs ahead of our marriage and didn’t know how to communicate or compromise. A perfect example: I expected him to know that family time was important and to be home more often while he expected me to understand that he was out working to provide for his family. I felt alone on our parenting journey and often made note of it which lead to fights because in his eyes I was complaining about the same thing over and over again even though the outcome was always the same.

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How often have you taken your spouse for granted or assumed he knew what you were feeling? How many times have you made a small hurtful comment or skipped a conversation with your spouse because you were too tired from a long day? I’ve done those things multiple times. 

Each act does not seem like a big deal, but over time they pile up and build into huge issues. Throw your pride in the mix, and now you have a bigger problem. 

I know firsthand that all this is easier said than done. I wish someone had sat me down years ago and explained it to me.   

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It’s through our struggles that we learned the value of marriage. Our pain taught us that we were both making bad decisions and needed to work on ourselves before we could work on our marriage. So, that’s what we did. It was during this time that I learned how strong I could be when needed. I started to focus on me more and not worry about what he was doing wrong; I worked out more, made time to do the things I loved to do, and worked on my flaws so that I could be a better version of myself… for myself, for him and our children. This helped our marriage tremendously because we went from caring about being right to only caring about being in a healthy marriage. Over time we came up with a daily schedule of who would take care of what around the house and with the children. We started to go out on date nights and sometimes it was just a walk in the city at night. As long as we were together, the place and time didn’t matter. We started taking vacations without the kids. Through these simple acts we fell in love with each other all over again, but this time it was more of selfless love, a patient, and kind love.

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Today, I share the stories of my saddest days because I learned so much from it. You have heard me say this a few times now, but love is not enough to keep you married! Children are not enough to keep you married! Marriage is hard work; the everyday stress of life will change you and your spouse, and if you aren’t willing to put your marriage before anything and everything, it simply cannot work. It takes selfless love, trust, devotion, commitment, respect and communication to keep your bond strong and your home happy. Not everyone will have a similar story, some might have that perfect marriage that has never hit a bumpy road and I applaud those that do but for anyone reading this post and going through a tough period in your marriage, just know that what you are going through is perfectly normal and that with time, commitment and dedication you can get hold of your marriage again.

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It’s only right and fitting to tell you that for every struggle we have there are tons of happy moments that outweigh the negative. These are the moments that kept me going while I was down and in despair.

Bob Marley said it best: “The truth is everyone is going to hurt you. You just got the find the ones worth suffering for”.

I hope this helps you or someone you know.

As always, I’d love to hear from you.  

Yours,