J and I have been together for 13 1/2 years. The first 3 1/2 we were best friends. We went from being best friends to engaged in a long-distance phone call and about 2 months later, we were married. Yesterday, I discussed how 'Against God's Plan' our marriage was.
When we were best friends, people - strangers even - would tell us we HAD to get married because we were such good friends. We thought they were crazy and that marriage would end our wonderful friendship. And we were right. It kinda has.
In the mire of life, the always laughing and joking part of our friendship has waned. It's not the giggle fest it used to be, but we still laugh and play often. Mainly that's my fault for taking life so seriously. (Shhh, don't tell J I admitted that!).
When I was single, a lady at work told me her and her husband were not friends. Being young and foolish, I didn't understand why she thought it was important. I had best friends (usually girls) and I had boyfriends (always boys). It wasn't until I married my best friend (a boy) and we went through infertility and all the icky life stuff that I realized how crucial the core friendship was to the survival of our marriage. If we weren't best friends, I don't think we would have made it to 9 years, 51 weeks and 1 day.
I definitely get that laugh thing. Before we started dating, and shortly after, I laughed at everything Michael said. Big bursts of laughter, like his humor took me off guard every single time. That waned. I even started to get annoyed with some of his brand of humor. After the cancer year, I totally got the laughter back. He catches me off guard again, and I regularly burst into real live, you're-the-best, and I'm the luckiest, full on laughter. It's very healing!
ReplyDeleteI like hearing your love story. And Happy Anniversary coming up!
If you don't have laughter and friendship, you don't have a lot in a marriage. The sex thing is only new for so long.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, there are times when the laughter doesn't come easily. Yeah, we know each other's jokes and all the rest of it, but if you can still hang in there together, that's the important thing. I can't imagine marrying someone who wasn't my best friend ahead of time. (And I did - and we're going on TWENTY years next year!)