Keeping it Real

I had a completely different post planned today, but instead, I'm going to honor what I said I would do with this blog and be 100% honest with you all.

Me and SO are kind of in a rough patch at the moment.
Now we can talk about the ethics of airing such information to the interwebs, but I'm not going to be talking about what problems I'm having. What I will talk about, its what it takes to make things work in the bleakest of times.


Now, at this moment you probably feel like I'm the last person on earth to give you any advice on rough times in a relationship. Hell, I'm going through one right now and I'm not through it yet. So why don't we just sit down and chat a bit about what makes us stay when things get rough
I stay because with my SO, I honestly believe we can make it through anything- we have so far, and until recently all those other problems seemed so small.  It takes so much faith to be with someone sometimes, it takes all of you and believing in the best of the other person to realize that if you are hurting because of them or some argument between you, you need to be honest with yourself about how you feel. I feel hopeful, but sober about this rough patch.

Times are hard, money is tight, and most of all you have to think about what you are bringing to the table in terms of a marriage. I don't think there's a question about how much I love my SO, but I'm not blind to either of our faults. I'm a fighter, I always have been, and I rage and rage against things I think are wrong. I have a diplomatic streak in me but I can be overly emotional and a poor listener at times. My SO is afraid of risk, and is such a cautious person that he sometimes closes himself off from some of the closest people in his life. When I look at the argument I had with him in those terms, I feel disappointment, and hurt for my SO because something I thought would be so easy for him to do, might just be his biggest challenge ever. I want to be there for him, I want to be understanding, but I feel hurt that this issue has to do with us trusting each other completely.

So What will it take to make this work? Time, patience, and love. But most of all, I think it will take a great deal of faith from me to believe that my SO will do his best to be the best person possible. I want him to have a plan, I want him to be honest with himself and with me about how much this is hurting us. But most of all I still want to be there for him.

Now, I had a very different answer besides that in mind. Like I said, I'm a fighter, and I thought that maybe by answering this problem by going in fighting and being blunt would be the solution. Now I could very well be wrong, and lord knows even when I try to be patient I am always blunt, but I think this time I'm going to need a little bit of both.

The quote I wanted to use today, before this post was this one

You don't marry someone you can live with, you marry the person who you cannot live without.

Its not about looking at a conflict in the way that its something you can live with, when it comes to the other person. Can you live without them? Can you accept them? Can you be honest and work through things to make it worth the fight? The answer to all of those should be yes before you get married, and that's what my SO and I are trying to reaffirm right now. 

I was going to write about settling within marriage today- why I think you shouldn't do it, and how I feel like I haven't by my decision to marry my SO eventually. I still feel, to this moment, that I am not settling because I know the depths of love and appreciation I have from my SO. So this isn't just his challenge, its ours. We are in this together, no matter how many people might think I'm crazy for it, and we are going to work hard to make it work. And in a sense, that's what making the choice to be married is about- having the will to commit yourself forever to someone, and work on something together to make it better, and go on loving each other.

Rough patches will come and go. Its the decision of both people in a relationship to have faith and pull through though, and that's the real secret behind making things last.