Marriage Review Year 6 : Building a personal Mount Rushmore.
When I completed writing my last annual marriage review, I was certain that it would be my last annual review of marriage. I am accustomed to living with my wife, and married life is no longer a constant sequence of epiphanies. Marriage ran its course, and it reached a stable form of my daily life. I found myself not needing to regularly “review” my marriage.
When I got married, I was excited for a brand new start, an empty canvas to paint a new life as a married couple. I was thrilled to amend some of relational dysfunctions I had experienced. I felt isolated and alone as most of my closest friends scattered across the globe. The constant inflow and outflow of people rendered a lot of uncertainty and lack of motivations to maintain relationship. Marriage, a lifelong commitment with my wife, meant a firm foundation to build relationships in the future. I was hopful to draw a ‘picture-perfect’ marriage on a brand new canvas.
However, I quickly realized I inherited a tainted and torn canvas. These blemishes, in forms of inexperience and bad habits, often amplified my relational dysfunctions. For instance, I had been used to making important decisions on my own, and my inablity to articulate my thinking process had created so much friction in our marriage. To maintain the illusion of a picture-perfect marriage, we needed a set of delicate brushes to masqueraded these blemishes, carefully avoiding relational landminds to make our marriage work. While we managed to paint some beautiful pictures as a couple, we kept puncturing our canvas, needing more patches than we started with.
This past year, we had many introspections on how our marriage had been. The whole process was triggered by one of our friends’ offer for counseling sessions, and it cascaded to many coversations ranging from monumental victories to devastating losses. We celebrated lives of two sons and priceless memories with them. On the other hand, we confessed unresolved tensions because of stress and strain we had applied to one another. These conversations enabled us a renewed, presumably healthier, dynamics as a couple. We welcomed constructive criticisms that would not have been possible as a newly wed, a sweet dividend of hard work we put in as a couple.
This past year taught me that the analogy of painting a picture perfect marriage with a set of delicate brushes was never attainable nor truly desirable. Instead, more fitting analogy is carving a personal Mount Rushmore with a set of chisels, etching out legacy as a family that would stand the test of time on hard rocks instead of on a paper canvas that rips at the slightest tension.
Carving Mount Rushmore certainly wouldn’t have been possible without calluses, splinters, and bruises. These aren’t symbols we typically associate with marriage; in fact, they represent conflicts and tensions, the very antithesis of what marriage is often idealized to be. While the ‘uglies’ of marriage — explosive arguments and bitter resentments — can be sources of great shame, these can also be proof of work, demonstrating our commitments that extend far beyond what is comfortable and easy for us.
I’m sure the seventh year will bring its own bliss and misery, laughter and tears, victories and defeats. Nevertheless, I await for many more proofs of work for an even more magnificent Mount Rushmore, carving faces of my beautiful wife and two sons.
