To my husband in this weird phase of marriage:

Life is weird right now, huh?

We don’t mean it to be. It just is. We work to get paid to pay everyone else and it always seems like there’s always more month than money. There are two very little people who are the bosses while we try so hard to maintain control. We’re pulled in so many directions that are often times opposite of each other.

So we fight. We fight about parenting decisions and whose turn it is to change a dirty diaper. We fight about money and how many times we chose to eat out last week. We fight about bedcovers and laundry and toilet cleaning. We fight about stupid things that we eventually forget what we’re fighting about and start fighting on principle alone.

And its exhausting. So much is demanded of us in our marriage. Schedules, household, obligations, endless cups of juice and their impending spills on the carpet. 6am alarms that are hungry babies and potty trips. Saying no to a snack fifteen minutes before dinner for the entire fifteen minutes. Finally sitting down for the first time in two hours just in time for someone to need you immediately. Sometimes its tough to catch a breath, much less a break to go pee in peace.

We sit in silence a lot. Not because we don’t have anything to talk about, but simply because we’re tired of talking. Sometimes I realize there are important things I haven’t told you because we just haven’t talked about them. I wish for that closeness we had early in our marriage when all we had to talk about was each other and our time was consumed with each other. Right now, sleep is better than sex and playing games on our phones is more relaxing than a conversation.

This is not to say I am unhappy. This is the life and marriage I’ve always dreamed of. I love nothing more than you and our children. Exhaustion from your beautiful lives is better than anything I can think of.

But my heart longs for you more than anyone else.

And I know its so hard right now. But I’m hanging on.

Because I’m going to need you.

I’m going to need you to tell me everything is going to be ok when I cry on their first day of kindergarten. I’m going to need you to hold me when the phone call of bad news comes in. I’m going to need you to drive after we drop off our babies at their college dorm room and to talk me down from trying to go rescue them from the bad decisions they will make there.

I’m going to need you to hold my hand while we sit together in the church pew at their wedding. And I’m going to need you to dance with me at the reception. And I’m going to need you to hold me that night while I recount all the memories of their little lives and cry about how they aren’t mine anymore.

I’m going to need you when the wallets and the schedules get a little bit looser. When there’s no one yelling for juice or covers or crying about non-existent dinosaurs living in their closets. When there are no bottles to wash and no toys to step on. When they are only here for the weekend, and instead of a month’s worth of questionable dirty laundry, they bring our grandchildren with them. I’m going to need you to buy me a porch swing and I’m going to need you to sit beside me and hold my hand and tell me how grateful you are for this life we built together.

And in the meantime of all this needing you, know this: I want you, too. I want you to be there with me every step of the way.

So if this means we sit in awkward silence while we wait for this phase of life to be over, that’s fine. I’ll just sit close to you so that you know I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I might even hold your hand. The one that is not playing Cookie Jam, of course.

I love you, and I’ll continue to love you through all of it.

Silence is fine, as long as I’m with you.

The author addresses her critics! Read the follow-up post: “In Defense of My Weird Phase of Marriage” —–> here!