3 months down

I know, I know, I know. I've officially become the slackest blogger on the face of the planet. Give me a break. Being married is enough work, but when you add onto that a new semester of school... well, let's just say that blogging hasn't been at the forefront of my mind lately.

And I can't believe how much has been happening since I've been away! There have been weddings left and right, and babies are showing up everywhere. (Well, technically, they haven't quite shown up yet, but we've seen photos of them floating around in there.)

Amidst all this blog-o-sphere wedding bliss, Mr. FP and I have have been adjusting to married life for the past 3 months. Yep, it was 3 months from this past Sunday that we had our wedding. And some days it feels like it's been way longer. Some days it feels as though we've been married for years. Key words being "some days".

Other days, it feels brand new. Other days I can't believe that it's been 3 months since everyone got together at my grandparents' cottage to celebrate with us because it feels like it just happened. (Which is probably yet another reason why it took us so long to get the Thank You cards sent out.)

And more often than not, I find myself wondering whether or not I feel differently about our relationship and life together than I did back before we signed that little piece of paper in front of our friends and family. Meg told me it would be different. She, and almost everyone who wrote pieces for her site, insisted we'd feel differently somehow.

But just between you and I, I didn't believe her. I thought that Meg was a liar.
Okay, not really.

But I couldn't imagine how it could possibly feel different. We'd been living together for almost 2 years already and I thought we'd linked our lives together as securely as we ever would be able to.

Pft, what the hell did I know?

Let me tell you, here and now, it's different. Well, it is for us anyway. Tons of ladies and gents still insist that it's no different, and that's cool; to each his own. But it feels different for us.

Maybe if I were better with words or if I somehow invented a machine that could express in writing how I feel, then I could translate it better. Alas, I'm no writer and I'm certainly not an inventor. But there are at least a couple of things that I can express about how and why it feels different to be married:

First of all, finger bling. Our wedding rings have become my most prized possession in the world. Seriously. Can't live without them. I take mine off to shower or do dishes, but other than that, it's stuck on good. His.... well, his is a different story. He's still adjusting to finger bling for the moment. He forgets to wear it sometimes. But even those days have a silver lining because he always feels insanely guilty about forgetting it. And he's admitted to secretly hoping that I don't notice. The best part is that the guilt he feels is self-inflicted. So cute.

Second, we finally got around to adding me to his banking account and once my student credit line is paid off, we'll be able to close mine which means we are financially linked. In fact, if Mr. FP ever wants to take me off his account, he'll have to close it entirely and get a brand new one. The lady at the bank helped to reinforce the commitment we made. Who knew.

Third, and here's a big one, it feels different because it feels more secure. People get engaged all the time, and people call off engagements all the time. And I'd like to say that when you enter the institution of marriage, you instantly become more committed than you were during the engagement, but let's face it, people get divorced as often as people call off engagements.

When it comes to our marriage, we take a page out of the book of Will & Jada. Yeah, I said it. Because it's true. I sounds stupid, but when I saw them on Ellen a few years ago, they were talking about how divorce isn't an option for them:

"What I found is divorce just can't be an option," the actor explained. "It's really that simple. And I think that's the problem with L.A. – there are so many options. So a huge part of the success for [Jada] and I is that we just removed the other options."

The secret to their success? "We're like listen, we're going to be together one way or the other so we might as well try to be happy," he said. (source)

For me, this was a necessity. I spent the better part of my childhood in mortal fear that my parents were going to be getting a divorce. Why? Well, because they told us, on more than one occasion when I was growing up, that they might be either getting a divorce or separating. And although they never did, the insecurity caused by the fact that divorce was an option for them haunted me for years.

So, for us, it's not an option.

Now, I'll be honest, I do think the theory behind this is slightly flawed. There are always deal-breakers; everyone has them. When we say that divorce is not an option, it's a bit of a white lie because our deal-breakers are infidelity and abuse.

And I don't think the Smith/Pinkett effect works for everyone; I think you really have to know that your relationship boils down to something good in the end because you can't maintain a relationship that is flawed from the beginning.

But every time we think that things might not work out, the "divorce is not an option" helps to remind us that our relationship, at it's core, is good and that the crap we're going through in the moment will eventually go away naturally or because we work through it.

And with family drama, trying to pay for my school and the possibility of a new job for Mr. FP, we definitely have plenty of the temporary crap to deal with. The first 3 months have been a doozy. And I know it's uphill from here. That sounds bad, but honestly, I'm not worried.

Somehow a few choice words and a piece of paper managed to powerfully remind us once again that we're a team.