I’ve been married nearly half my life, coming up 20 years July 2019, so I feel somewhat qualified to talk about marriage. I can actually only really talk about my own marriage, because I have no idea how other couples navigate their own relationships, and quite frankly that really has nothing to do with me.
If you can’t be silly with your husband, who can you be silly with?
So what does marriage mean to me?
To me it means sharing my life with someone who I love.
To me it means that I will share the great experiences, the fun stuff, the adventures, the travel, the life-changing stuff (like the kid arriving and the raising of him) and the silly conversations, it also means that he’ll be there for the not so great things too, like sickness, like grumpy days, like depression, like those times when things don’t turn out the way you wanted them too. He’ll be there for those times, when I can’t make up my mind what I want to eat, when I really want to figure out how to do something myself and get frustrated when I need to ask for help, and when I make less than stellar decisions, and I need him to help me pick up the pieces. For me it doesn’t mean that I become one with him, because literally I’m not sure how that would happen, and I’m my own person, always have been, always will be, just like he is. It also doesn’t mean that I love everything little thing about him, because there are definitely things about him, that absolutely drive me up the wall, and I’m sure there are things that he is not so enamoured by me either, but it does mean that I love his vibe, I love his values, and his outlook on life.
For me it means that we’ll dig in deep when the sh#t hits the fan, because we’re both committed to making this work. It means that we always love hard, but that we love harder when things are not quite as amazing as they can be. It means that I can be completely honest with him, about how I’m feeling about all the things, because that is what he signed on for. It also means that I will stop and listen to him when he needs to off load. It means that I can’t promise to fix all the things that are wrong, but that I will always be there to help him figure it out, and then cheer him on. It means that I honour and respect myself, and know that occasionally I need time to myself to work on myself, to help me grow into the person I need to be and that I know he needs time to follow his own passion, whatever that looks like.
It means knowing that I will continue to love him, in all the different forms he will encompass throughout our lives together, just as I hope he will for me. Because we are definitely not the same people we were when we stood before each other, and our friends and family and promised to love each other on our wedding day.
And frankly I can’t think of a better person to share this crazy thing called life with!
Angela Port - Celebrant - Dunedin 