My Best Marriage Advice

I’ve been married to my wife, Karen for 43 years. Most of those years were happy but there were a couple of rough years. I met Karen the day I graduated from college. It was love at first sight. Even though I was crazy about Karen I was very cautious. Two years before meeting Karen I had a close call. I was engaged. The wedding date was set. The invitations were out. The wedding venue was booked. We had joint bank accounts. Furniture had been sent from the east coast for the apartment we would live in. Then, 16 days before the wedding I realized she was not the one. I broke off the engagement. It was incredibly messy. After that experience I was in no hurry to get married. After meeting dreamboat Karen we started spending lots of time with each other. I knew I loved Karen but if I was going to marry her I wanted to be 100% sure she was the one. According to Karen I broke up with her five times over the next year and a half.

 I honestly don’t remember how many times I broke up with Karen but I was driving both of us crazy with my state of indecision. I kept waiting for a sign from God but it never came. Finally one day I pulled out a calendar and put a big x on September 20th, 1980. I met Karen a couple of days later and popped the question. After all the grief I had put her through I was relieved when she said yes.

I was 25 and Karen was 23 when we were married. Several of my friends had already been married for a few years. I was warned by all of them, beware, your first year of marriage is going to be brutal. As it turned out, our first year of marriage was awesome. Everything was great until year 14. There is a huge back story to our marriage crisis but that is not the purpose of this article. We survived two really bad years and moved on.

At some point, I’m not exactly sure when, I started becoming controlling of Karen. I had certain expectations about how I thought Karen should carry herself in social settings. If I didn’t like something Karen said, or how she engaged in a conversation I would let her know about it. Looking back on it I realized I was becoming very critical of my wife. I was trying to make her be something she wasn’t. One day things came to a head. We were at a pastor's retreat. Karen said something that I thought was boring everyone. When we got into the car to leave the retreat I unloaded on her. Karen is not an emotional person. I’ve only seen her cry a few times in all the years we’ve been married. Karen cried! It was at this point I realized I was way out of line. Ironically Karen and I were headed to a hotel to celebrate our anniversary. I know what you are thinking. “Steve, what were you thinking and how dumb can you be?” As you might imagine Karen and I had a long heartfelt talk that night. I did a lot of apologizing. I was wrong and I knew it.

After that painful episode I made a decision. I decided to let Karen be Karen. And you know what happened? The girl I fell in love with was back. I realized that I loved Karen for the very things I was criticizing her for. Take it from a former control freak, allow your spouse to be themselves and watch them blossom into the person you fell in love with. And that is my best marriage advice. 

Stay close to Jesus,

Steve