Nearly three years after the wedding, I am coming to terms with being a wife. For the first two years I could never bring myself to say I enjoyed being a wife. I didn’t like being married at all. 

I asked my husband if he thought that we would ever move away from my hometown. He said no. I asked him if it’s because I’ve never been known to thrive away. I’m not in love with my hometown, there are lots of places I would rather live, but despite my best efforts the comfort of sameness draw me near. 

Sameness. It seems to be a running theme in my mental health. Being a wife was not the same. I was nearly 30 when I married. I had plenty of time to establish a lovely sameness in my adulthood. All of a sudden I had a new last name, odd in-laws, and this guy sleeping in my bed. 

To say the first two years were difficult would be an understatement. I would have divorced him in a heartbeat if it was feasible. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because I wanted him out of my life. He was and is my favorite human. But for years I only had my own foolishness to deal with. Now he was in my kitchen, and my bathroom. He was in my bank account and work life. He was everywhere. And he wasn’t perfect. I not only had to deal with my own shortcomings (which is generally easy to do), but I had to deal with another persons shortcomings too. Yikes. 

There was way too much change going on. In that time I never thought of myself as a wife. I wasn’t proud to use the word “husband.” I clung tightly to my maiden name especially when I was angry. “I cannot believe I changed my name for you!” Or even worse “I cannot have your mother’s name! She is Mrs. Jones, not me!” When his family would visit and they would laugh easily together in a way I just couldn’t understand I felt like an outsider. “I am NOT a ‘Jones’.” 

It seems like it took a really long time, but somehow I have a new sameness. I am a wife. I adore my husband the many moments that I don’t want to slaughter him. He has become my whole world. I don’t have his mother’s name. I have our name. He supports me in all I do, he believes in me and encourages me. Yeah, we have what seems like a lot of arguments. We disagree on perhaps most things. But a nuclear engineer married a princess. It is what it is! 

I am infinitely blessed to have him in my life especially as a husband. He is my very best friend. In a perfect world I would have sorted this out before the wedding, but I’m pretty sure the wedding would have never happened. Sometimes you just have to make the leap. I’m not convinced all the attempts in the world to “prepare” for marriage would have worked. There was no preparing me for all the shock involved in intimately dealing with another human. Friendship just doesn’t compare. If my best friend makes me really angry, we can take a little break. There is no taking a break from the person that you share your life with. Any attempts at “taking a break” seem likely to cause more damage.

Finally, taking a break from us would be taking a break from sameness. Lord knows I wouldn’t want that!