I remember once a very long time ago, looking over at John and asking him if we would always be as in love and happy as we felt right then. We weren’t married yet. I think we were engaged. For us there was never much difference between dating and engaged. We started our relationship both knowing where we wanted it to go. Or thinking we knew. In my mind, the ultimate dream was getting married. But in that moment of questioning I glimpsed the life that was beyond that beautiful wedding I envisioned. A life I hoped to live with this young man beside me.

Looking back on our first years of marriage, it almost feels like a dream. Life was, in many ways, shallow. I didn’t see it then. I struggled with the same things all newlyweds struggle with. And I struggled with the responsibilities of a household. We married young, neither of us had learned to really live yet. I felt myself consumed with household chores, meal planning, and eventually motherhood. I struggled almost constantly with a feeling of unfulfillment. I was trying so hard to be the wife and mother that I thought I was supposed to be.

And I hurt. I hurt because the breathless feeling that I used to feel about my husband seemed to be slipping away. The love notes he used to slip into my backpack disappeared. Sometimes the plans he had dreamed changed and I felt like he was breaking a promise to me. I didn’t understand how his mind worked, how he had to explore and dream and look at all the options. I retreated to spending lots of time with my family. It was there that I felt truly myself. I wasn’t mom or wife. I was just Miriam. When I interacted with John I would often slip into a pretend version of myself. Apparently even my voice would change, this was pointed out to me by my sister when she would hear me answer the phone when John would call. But I didn’t know how to do it differently. He didn’t understand the all-consuming task of motherhood and I didn’t understand the stresses of his work or really what made him tick. I think that the transition to parenthood was just as much of a shock to him as it was to me, but we didn’t really talk about it.

John watched me slip away from him. He says now that he felt he was losing me to the caricature of “preschool mom.” And ironically, I was striving really hard to fill that role. I was trying so hard to be “that woman.” The one who had dinner on the table and a clean house when her husband came home from work. The one who was always available sexually for her husband even when she really didn’t feel like it. The one who suffered silently when she just needed her husband to say how much he appreciated her and all that she did. The one who submitted alway, obeyed often, and settled for a life that was valuable because of who her husband was. And constantly I felt like I was failing.

It wasn’t bad. We had plenty of happy moments. Sometimes I opened up and was honest to my husband and cried the tears of pain that needed to be cried and he comforted me. Often we dreamed together and made plans. I started to learn more of who he was, but I think I neglected to learn more of who I was. I tried so hard to be someone I thought I was supposed to be, that I lost sight of the woman that I was. John and I had been best friends before we got married. Looking back now, I think we knew each other the least during those first few years of marriage. It was as if marriage destroyed our friendship and it has taken us a long time to begin to build that back.

Over the last few years I have been on a journey to discover myself. I have stopped trying to be someone else, and instead am exploring how to be myself. I began to truly see myself as someone existing completely separate from my husband, someone who has the choice every day to decide my journey, someone who has the right to speak up, someone who can be honest when I am not that person I thought I was supposed to be. And it was when I began to see myself that way that I began to be a better friend to my husband. We cannot truly love someone if we do not love ourselves. Love seems so much more powerful to me these days. Instead of feeling breathless in John’s presence, I feel full of breath. Fully alive.

I told him yesterday that life is not roses and daisies. It still hurts, a lot. Sometimes even more than it did when I was trying to ignore the pain. But it is real, I am real. If I could go back and answer that question I asked so long ago: “Will we always be as in love as we are right now?” I would say this: “No. Thankfully no. We will be more. But it won’t feel like it does right now. It will be deeper. So much deeper. This relationship will take more from you than you know you have. And it will give to you more than you could ever imagine. One day you will look back and realize that this is real life. Not a fairy tale. And you will be grateful for the pain and joy and dreams and tears and struggle. Because you will love, truly love this man. And when you wonder if it is possible to love him any more than you do right now, you will hope that you have enough life left to find out.”