The First (Year) Is The (Hardest)

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the first year of marriage is the hardest one. Even if you lived together before, marriage brings some subtle little problems with it that you probably didn't have previously. I'm discovering some of these little things as they crop up and in the interest of full disclosure, I'm sharing them with you.

This is the picture that came up when I searched "First year of marriage". Isn't it appropriate???

Obvious changes you knew to expect but somehow didn't (aka slow, creeping changes):

1. You can't just break up. Duh.

E and I have been together for eons and would never break up, but whenever we were having a hissy fit there was always the little voice in the back of my mind saying "HA I COULD SO BREAK UP WITH YOU IF I WANTED TO". Now that we're married, the little voice is saying something more like "HA I COULD...wait....I can't? Shit". It's not that I want to leave my annoying as shit charming hubby, but the pissy fit arguments do seem to mean a little more now that I can't kick him out since, you know he kinda officially lives here. And since we're mostly confined to a single room, there's no where "here" for me to kick him to to get some space. You can't even holler and talk about breaking up because divorce is some scary shit. The result of this? Tonight I ended up sitting in bed with my back to him because there was no where for either of us to go to get space. PATHETIC I tell you, which brings me to...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange)

It seems that everywhere I look, people feel that marriage changes everything. Even after multiple years of living together (the royal we-ers proclaim) being married changes your relationship. They can't say how or when or why, but are all very adamant about an eventual change.

I saw one of these microcars on HGTV yesterday. Love!

Well, E and I have now been married about 13 days and thus far I have to say that nothing has changed. That is to say, if you look at the surface, of course things have undergone a so called change. I wear two rings on my finger, he wears a different band. We now have two shared credit cards and two shared bank accounts. My last name is now his and we call each other hubby and wifey (good job on that one E...). But aside from the superficial, neither E nor I have felt any real relationship changes. We got married, cleaned up supplies, spent the night in a hotel, cleaned up more supplies and drove home. All in all it was a busy but productive weekend and we had a good time visiting with all our friends and family. I don't know what either of us were supposed to expect, the clouds to part so the sun could suddenly shine down new meaning on our relationship? A sudden desire to pick up the bath towel from where E drops it on the floor or a new tolerance for him farting in bed? I would appreciate him closing the caps of bottles in the shower but we're working on that. While I'm sure this is a bit premature to call, thus far E and I don't really feel like our relationship has changed. We knew 100% of each other before getting married and we still do, there have been no unexpected twists or surprises.

One thing that people seem to focus on is the idea of a honeymoon phase. Honestly, I'm pretty sure our honeymoon phase ended sometime in 2006. We haven't been the kind of "new love stars in their eyes" couple for a long time but we've somehow maintained our love and attraction. When we walk down the street we still hold hands, we still cuddle and laugh and go out on dates. We don't wish we were back in those cant-keep-our-hands-off-each-other teenage hormone years because what we have now is better and we certainly spend more time talking ;)  

Playing house....I hate that phrase!

My hopes for our marriage come more from the outside than from within. My family has seen us as "playing house" for years, despite the fact that our relationship has outlasted almost all of theirs. In addition to making legal what we already shared, I would selfishly like some recognition from my family. E and I work hard to make our relationship thrive and I'm tired of hearing them belittle it. I don't expect their recognition to change anything but it would be nice. Moving out would also be nice and while we're obsessively refreshing craigslist and house hunting, we have no real intentions of moving out anytime soon.

What about you? Did marriage change your relationship? If so, was it a slow change or an immediate one?