What They Didn’t Tell Me About “Happily Ever After” and What It’s Taught Me

Here’s some food for thought. I read somewhere only a whopping 13% of married parents report they’re satisfied with the amount of time they get to spend as a couple with their partner after having children. I didn’t do the research and I don’t know where the statistic was pulled from, so I’m not claiming it’s true. I will say, however, that it doesn’t surprise me.

Honestly I have to say I don’t fall into that 13%. Aaron works in medicine, and even pre-covid the field was busy. During quarantine there were no elective surgeries, which drastically cut back his hours. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so much since we’d had children. Overall, though, the pandemic hasn’t changed his schedule. A regular, non-quarantine schedule has him gone before the kids are awake and – more often than not – back after they are in bed. Add parenting into the mix, and he’s working two full-time jobs. He is my Super Man.

I fell in love with him for many reasons, but the top five that come to mind when I get asked that question are always this:

Marriage on its own requires effort. Constant, daily, mental-gymnastics-worthy effort that comes from both partners. I did not know this going into marriage. In fact, I could probably dedicate an entire blog page and podcast to the topic of what “Happily Ever After” really looks like, because it isn’t at all what I pictured. What I desperately wish someone had told me was this: All the time, energy, and sacrifice necessary to learn and grow together as a couple gets exponentially more difficult when you decide to have children.

I naively thought that having kids would not change our marriage. Everyone I came into contact with told me how much my life would change – no sleep, no sex, no time, no privacy, etc. No one mentioned the toll it would take on my marriage. No one warned me that all the time, energy and resources children consume are precious resources that get diverted from your marriage.

Maybe it doesn’t look like this for everyone. I certainly can’t speak for all married couples. But I do think the feeling is somewhat universal – I often long to spend time with Aaron like I did before life was so busy, and I can’t complete a simple, five minute task without at least 15 interruptions. Marriage looks different now, and there’s a lot of planning and labor (physical and mental) that goes into preparing for a night out.

I feel incredibly lucky. While I don’t get to spend as much time with Aaron as I want to sometimes, I’ve found someone who shares my opinion that a healthy marriage is important to raising healthy kids. To that end, I’m back to #1 on my list – Aaron didn’t just date me, he courted me. Although courtship is commonly thought of as dating, (I googled courtship, and they were all variants of this definition) that’s not what I think of when I hear the term “courtship”.

Characters of written works like Pride and Prejudice or Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing immediately spring to mind. I believe they had it right; courtship is to woo and win over the affections of the one you seek to marry. It is the flirtation, the gifts, the evenings out, the non-physical intimacy portion of the relationship. I personally believe it is something that should continue even after you get married. It’s not like your spouse suddenly becomes old news after you walk down the aisle. It can never hurt your relationship to keep treating someone as though they are the most precious and wonderful thing that has happened to you.

After children come into the picture, the frame shifts, and the picture isn’t the same anymore. Life happens. Some people don’t have children, but other things shape the relationship they are building.

For me, although marriage is not what I pictured (and neither is parenthood), I am certain of one thing. I chose the right man as my partner. Yes, he is busy, and yes, we don’t spend much time together as a couple in this season of life. But he still courts me as we go through life.

I go to sleep every night – no matter what may have happened that day – without a shadow of a doubt that I am the most special, precious, and wonderful thing to him. Without each other, we would not have these children, or this life. It would look different. And we both cherish that knowledge, and work hard to show that love and appreciation in many ways. Sometimes it’s easy, most times it’s hard work. But it’s real, and it’s an exercise in understanding that even if life isn’t what we imagined growing up, we can shape the life we live.

“Nobody said it was easy, nobody said it would be this hard” – lyrics by Coldplay from The Scientist.