I’ve been with my husband for nearly eleven years and we celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary this past September. I’ve shared so many special moments with him. We were high-school sweethearts and experienced all of those magical “firsts” together. We share a history that in its own way, is a unique love-story.

I remember the first time he kissed me. I believed that he could wash away every damn problem in my life. I remember how amazing it was, in the very beginning; the feeling of falling so fast and hard in love and believing that this special person can save you from every bad thing in the world. He could make it different. We could be perfect together.

 Yet, our marriage journey has been anything but easy or perfect.  It has been tough. While there have been plenty of great times—laughs, wonderful memories and now the joy of having two young children, we’ve experienced our fair share of struggles.

There’s been hurt.

Fights.

Silence.

Long talks about how we can both change.

How we can treat each other differently.

How can we make it work?

While divorce never came up, there have been moments of wondering if life would be easier not being married. Because truth of the matter is, marriage is HARD and you actually have to WORK at it. You have to deal with those problems, no matter how many times they get swept under the rug.

The basis of a great, or maybe normal marriage, could be mimicked from our childhood and the type of environment we were raised in. If a person comes from a stable and loving home-life then chances are they will know how to reiterate that back into their own marriage.

I can remember growing up and all of my close friends had parents still married. I didn’t want to be that different person that had divorced parents. I just wanted to come from a normal family where mom and dad actually liked each-other. I felt robbed of that, and it stung.

If someone comes from a broken home, do they stand a fighting chance at a normal and happy marriage?

I’m a statistic and so is my husband. We both come from broken homes. Both of our parents are divorced and we experienced less-than ideal home-lives growing up. We didn’t have the loving or emotionally connected marriage role-models to look up to. We don’t have people to mirror our relationship to. We can’t ask for advice, we can’t seek a consoling shoulder when marriage woes get the better of us. We came from broken homes and we are trying our damn best to make our marriage work. Now that we have children, it’s become even more important for us to work out our differences and to be better for one another. I don’t want my boys to grow up in a broken home either; I don’t want them to hear the day after day fighting, screaming, or to feel the emotional disconnect from Mom and Dad.

When I was growing up, I experienced a child-hood of having two parents constantly fighting. I remember being in my room, late at night, and hearing the screams through those thin walls. I was only thirteen-years old but I made a vow to myself: I would never want to be like my parents. Back in high-school when I was dating my husband, I would cry on his shoulder and confide in him. He was the only reason I survived my parents shitty divorce. He knew all about my broken family and how it screwed me up. And I knew all about the damage his parents did to him. We would share war stories of how shitty our families were during long car rides and squeeze one another’s hand to let the other one know that it was all going to be alright.

We’ve been through so much together, yet we still lose touch on how to treat one another. I’ve had the same conversation with my husband numerous times about how we both don’t know how to be a good spouse.

We talk about it constantly. How can we do it differently?

Some-days, it’s about not being patient enough with each other.

Some-days, instead of hearing what the other person is trying to say, it’s about getting the last word in.

Most days, it’s about miscommunication; which then leads to frustration, angry words, and silence.

We want to be different. We refuse to be another statistic. We strive to make this marriage work because at the end of the day, we truly love and care for one another.

So we’re going to fight like hell to prove it.

 

I’m Laura and I’m a stay at home mom to two small boys that consume all my time and energy. In my spare time I love to write and run a little blog over at https://excusethemesscom.wordpress.com/. I also enjoy doing yoga, a pot of coffee a day and I attempt to be crafty.

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Wannabe's are Guest Authors to BLUNTmoms. They might be one-hit wonders, or share a variety of posts with us. They "may" share their names with you, or they might write as "anonymous" but either way, they are sharing their stories and their opinions on our site, and for that we are grateful.

1 Comment

  1. I’m not from a “broken home,” but I’ve left one in my wake. I’ve always said (to anyone who will listen…), there’s no way the Millenials and later generations won’t suffer big time mental health issues centered around abandonment. How could a child from a divorced family, no matter how amicable, NOT come away from a divorce the feeling they’ve been left by one parent, and/or the other? Divorce is being “normalized” over time… We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the story!

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