The Story of a Lifetime - Love and Marriage

This is the second installment of this joint series between Shelley and myself. You can read her version here.

What was your first year of marriage like? What was the hardest adjustment you had to make that first year? What things did you argue about most in the early years? How did you and your significant other resolve conflict?

Shelley and I got married during the summer of 1999 and from the start it proved that it would be a challenge.

The first thing we did when we got married was rent a house, the "yellow house." The owner had painted the house canary yellow and he had even painted the mailbox the same color. You can see a good picture of it over at Shelley's blog. Painting the house yellow wasn't the only unusual thing about the owner of the house, he also would just "pop in" at night because he claimed that he either forgot our phone number or it had changed. He was usually drunk when he would do this.

Since we were married in the summer that also meant that Shelley's brother's kids were visiting for the summer and since Shelley had always had the bigger place to live, the kids always stayed with her. This meant our house was usually full with our niece, nephew, Shelley's brother and her mom. This didn't really cause any problems but it did make the first few months of marriage interesting.

One of our first arguments revolved around house cleaning. I had always lived previously with other people that were very neat oriented and this had become my way as well. Shelley on the other hand didn't have house cleaning as a priority but this wasn't something that was a surprise to me. So, I figured that once we were married I would take this responsibility. Well, I remember Shelley getting upset with me because either when I got home from work or on Saturday's I would be cleaning and she felt I needed to be spending that time with her. One of our first arguments was passive aggressive and revolved around a sugar canister. I came through the kitchen one day and their was a sugar container on the counter so I just put it up in the cabinets. Apparently Shelley wanted it on the counter and she replaced it back on the counter. The next time I saw it on the counter, I put it back in the cabinet. Everybody Loves Raymond had an episode that revolved around whether Ray or Debra were going to move a suitcase up stairs, this was very similar. If you read this post on Shelley's blog you will see that this is something we are still working on.

We also had disagreements around finances. I was 32 and Shelley was 30 when we got married and we both had been on our own for awhile. Shelley actually made more money than me at the time and she was use to spending "her money" "her way" and to say I am a little frugal would be kind. Hours of counseling has finally helped us work through this issue.

Our biggest challenge to our marriage came six months into it. Shelley's company offered her a significant promotion and raise but it was going to require us to relocate to Lafayette, Louisiana. I knew if Shelley wasn't married to me she would jump on this opportunity but I wasn't prepared to move. So, we made an agreement with her company that she would take the job on a trial basis and we would make a decision in 6 months. But, this still required her to move to Lafayette where she got her own apartment. She would fly home Friday night and would fly back to Louisiana on Monday morning. Having only been married six months and now only seeing each other two days a week was a big challenge and we ultimately decided Dallas would be our home.