What makes a marriage?

Celebrating and pondering eleven years of togetherness

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Hubs and I, 5 April 2014. How young do we look??? Photo by Lara Nouri

Today, April 5 is my wedding anniversary. Hubs and I have been married for eleven years now and together for fifteen. That time has sped by.

Hubs says it’s been the best fifteen years of his life. It has not been the best fifteen years of mine - but that is not a reflection on him or our relationship. In fact, I don’t think I would have got through the last fifteen years without him holding space for me as I transitioned through the menopause and navigated the losses of family, friends and pets. And the fact that we survived through that turbulence and have grown as individuals and as a couple, I reckon gives us a solid foundation in our relationship to grow up and grow old together.

This week Sam Baker wrote a beautiful piece on what she believes has made her 32-year marriage work (her anniversary is April 2). I definitely recommend you have a read and see how many of her 17 things you can tick off on your own ‘making it work’ list.

Why do some marriages last, when others don't?

I concur with them all, but I still need to keep working at it! Marriage is relationship, which means relating to each other and relating is blooming difficult at times - especially when we are two very different people, with different energies and ways of being in the world. Here’s what I believe has helped us.

Love languages. Sam mentions this in her article. “You might think it’s all bollocks (and you might well be right), but personally I reckon there’s something in it.” So do I, Sam, I really do.

There are five love languages (read about them or take the quiz here). Hubs’ number 1 love language is physical touch. He needs those cuddles and the physical intimacy of holding hands across the table. Mine is quality time with people I love. A day out with Hubs at a book shop is my language of love for sure. Physical touch comes way down my list. He always hugs my mother, I quite often don’t. It doesn’t mean I love her or him less, I just tend to show my love by giving them a book.

We know this about each other, so we make an effort to express love in the language of the other. Do we always remember? Nope. Does Hubs have to ask me for a hug sometimes. Yes. Do I have to suggest days out to our favourite galleries/book shops or new places to discover? Yes. Do we get antsy about it? No. We have a language that helps us to remember to connect to each other, especially when we have been busy down our respective rabbit holes and pop up for air.

Aligned values. I think it really helps if your values are in alignment. They don’t have to be exactly the same, and they don’t have to be expressed in the same way, but I do think the relationship is stronger if what really matters to you both is not in conflict. As an example, I really value periods of solitude and Hubs values his Aikido training. Solitude (often in my art shed or the garden) makes me a calmer, happier person and Aikido does the same for Hubs. So I always support his time on the mat, because it brings us both so many benefits. And he supports my solitude time because he knows it is essential to my being. I don’t do Aikido, he doesn’t try to squeeze into my art shed. We share our journeys and insights though - and enjoy the sense of calm our respective pursuits bring us.

Spaces in our togetherness. Kahlil Gibran writes in The Prophet on marriage:

… let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

The ability to maintain your individuality and to support each other to be the best version of our self, is crucial, I think, in this relating thing. When I envisage a metaphor for a relationship it is two pillars supporting a larger structure. Each of us is a pillar, the larger structure is the relationship. To make it work, both pillars have to be strong in their own way, and work as a supportive team. Sure, sometimes one of you will be bearing more weight than the other, but on balance the relationship is supported by two whole people - and supporting each other’s wholeness is part of the deal. And this is something Hubs and I are very good at. I celebrate ‘us’ for that. I’m not saying it is always easy, but we both believe that personal growth is important and we hold space for each other to do that, and we hold each other accountable for it too.

Another thing that I think we do well is to be best of friends and biggest cheerleaders for each other. That is not to say we always agree and we never roll our eyes at each other (in or out of the other’s view). We often don’t agree and we often do the eye roll. At the end of the day though, our friendship and our relationship is bigger than our grumps and we will be the first to cheer each other on with our successes and pick each other up when we are floundering in a sea of despond.

Which brings me to the one thing that has made all the difference in our being able to relate in all of the above: Human Design.

When Hubs and I first met, a friend of mine was studying to be a Human Design analyst and so she created our charts and gave us lots of very useful insight into how we are each designed. Most importantly, she gave us a lot of insight into how we are designed so very differently. You may remember my post a couple of weeks ago about my resonating with the tortoise more than the hare.

So one of the key differences for Hubs and I is that he is a hare and I am tortoise. He is designed to do work that lights him up, quickly and efficiently. He has a speed of thought, and often action, which can leave me tumbling about in his wake, wondering what happened. He can get very frustrated when he is already ten steps ahead of me and I’ve not kept up with his thinking (even though I’m not a mind reader). I can get annoyed when he skips over detail that I think is important, and then it turns out it was. It helps to know that he is designed that way. It doesn’t stop the frustration on both sides, but it does stop it escalating into an argument because we have a language to discuss it.

Another key difference is that he responds and makes his decisions - or rather should make his decisions - over time and with emotional clarity. He experiences the ‘emotional wave’ and should allow the whole gamut of emotion to settle before responding to anything. This is known as inner authority and it always lives in the body. Hubs’ authority is in the solar plexus/emotional centre.

My inner authority is in the spleen/instinct centre and is ‘in the moment’. I do not experience this ‘emotional wave’. I still feel emotions, very much, but not in the same way. My highs aren’t as high, my lows aren’t as low. My clarity comes from a full-body instinctual knowing not from riding out the emotions.

This can be highly complementary when Hubs is in the ‘wave’ and my instinct tells me to cut him off at the pass before he either says something or makes a decision he might regret. I can guide him to hold off until the wave has passed - and sometimes (more now than earlier in our relationship) he concurs. He’s also getting much better at slowing down and self-regulating on that one, now he’s more aware of it.

My solar plexus/emotional centre is undefined though, so I can be very vulnerable to his ‘moods’ - again less so now that we are more aware and work intentionally with our designs. I just let him ride out his wave rather than try to ‘make it better’. Sometimes, I just go for a walk and leave him to stew. This was much harder during my menopause ‘perfect storm’, and easier now that I feel less vulnerable and more solid in ‘myself’.

Hubs says that knowing our designs has helped him to be more considerate of his impact on me; he doesn’t expect me to grasp ideas, thoughts etc at the same speed as him. He’ll ask me to do things at my pace not his or he’ll let me know when he could do with a quick response rather than just expect it. Often he will “plant a seed” rather than expect an immediate answer - or he will ask for my “splenic awareness” when he needs my perspective.

Initially getting my response was more about him being seen and heard and my slower responses were often read as I wasn’t seeing, hearing or trusting him. Now he gives different meaning to the response I give him because he knows I just don’t do things his way or at his speed. Equally, if he speeds ahead of me too quickly, I can feel that he’s not listening so I ask him to just slow down and let me complete my thought.

We both have a need for certainty but this plays out in different ways. He needs to feel certain that he ‘knows’ enough and with other aspects of his design, he can feel really inadequate if he thinks he doesn’t know or he should know. At the same time he is very comfortable with experimentation, adventure and trying stuff out - so driving out of Paris on a Friday afternoon trusting a Sat Nav is a breeze for him. Not so for me!

I need to feel certain of the details and practicalities. Driving out of Paris on a Friday afternoon on a road I don’t know, with no visual reference (i.e. route planned out on a map), trusting a Sat Nav, is terrifying for me. Needless to say Hubs did the driving, while I gripped the passenger seat. He doesn’t take that personally. He knows it has nothing to do with his driving and everything to do with my need for a map. (Although I doubt I’d have been able to map read our way through Paris. We’d probably still be there!)

Fifteen years on we are still studying and learning about each other through our design. Something new crops up almost every day, and Human Design gives us a way to explore it rather than argue about it. We know our relationship has survived and grows daily because we have this tool to help us to relate, especially when we make no sense to each other at all!

So as we celebrate eleven years of a marriage of minds, and fifteen years of working out the relating thing, I’m thinking we both lucked out on that day that we met at a conference that I didn’t want to go to. I’m so glad I went!

Happy Anniversary Hubs! Here’s to the next eleven years.

Until next time…

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