Communication is key

My wife and I officially celebrated our first year of marriage this past weekend. Oddly enough, it still sounds goofy to use the term “wife” and “husband” because we dated for so long. Over the course of the first year of marriage, we learned a lot about each other and our relationship.

I think people are sometimes enthralled in the honeymoon phase as people call it but for us, we had been dating for so long that it felt business as usual as we entered our married life together. Not to say that is a bad thing as every day is a honeymoon with you, honey.

Sorry for those that are now put off by the public affection but I’ve also learned over the course of a year that if you think you might have said something that can be construed as an insult, you’d better backtrack or apologize before you find yourself doing more chores and completing honey-do lists to make up for it.

We’ve really enjoyed the last year of marriage and on our year anniversary, it was nice to look back a year ago and remember the blast we had at our wedding. So many people are getting married this time of year and it’s fun to see pictures of weddings on social media or even attend weddings that make you remember your own.

But something that we also experienced over our anniversary was a lack of communication. Plans were made for the us to celebrate our one-year milestone and I came down with a cold late last week. I felt like I had been hit by a truck as I laid on the couch and attempted to sweat and sleep it off.

Therefore, I assumed our plans for celebrating were off. So when I started to feel better, I made plans of my own. My plans didn’t involve going out to dinner or watching a movie and making dinner at home but rather involved a night of cards with my friends. Big mistake, buddy.

In my head, I rationalized by saying this was actually the day before our anniversary so we could just celebrate the next day which was our actual anniversary. However, the next day, we were expected to be at a Packer party and then had family coming over after we were done at the party which I had completely forgotten about. Mistake number two. At this point I was so far condemned to sleeping on the couch that I might as well have saved myself the trouble and set up our tent in the back yard. Lucky for me, I’ve got a wonderful and understanding wife who was willing to work through my miscommunication and we agreed that we would cut family time a little short on Sunday afternoon to spend some time together. It all ended up working out well. We spent time with friends and family and then went home and watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch with our cats. I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. I wasn’t maliciously trying to sabotage plans but I learned that communicating things to those around you is paramount to the success of your relationships.

I’ve said it before in my columns, and I’ll say it again. I believe learning these lessons and making sure to put the lessons into practice is one of the most important things we can do to grow in this life. I never want to stop learning and clearly, I’ll make enough mistakes throughout marriage and life to make sure I keep learning.

Speeding

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ife