It's no small thing
Tonight we're going out to dinner at a much more expensive place than we would normally. Because on Monday JJ and I will have been married for 6 months. I'm not a big anniversary-celebrator for stuff like being married 6 months. A year, sure. But this is the one time I'm giving in and saying yes, let's celebrate being married 6 months because, well, it's just silly to celebrate being married for say 1 1/2 years or 2 1/2 years but this is the first time we can say "Hurrah, we made it six months ... and we still like each other a lot!"
Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to launch into the thrills of married life, nor am I about to say that the last 6 months of my life have been incomparable to any other. Nor am I about to claim that after 6 months of marriage that I know it all about the covenant of marriage and what works and what doesn't work. What I will say is that there are times when my husband smells, he's hairy (you have no idea how hairy - sometimes it's like hugging a monkey), he snores (which wakes me up), follows me around like a lost puppy on certain occasions, and annoys the daylights out of me. And I love him ... not in spite of all these things, but maybe because of them. I, too, have nasty habits like leaving glasses out on the table after I'm done with them, changing my clothes twice a day ... and leaving the discharged ones on the floor, emptying the refrigerator on a weekly basis (and therefore throwing things out that he still wants to eat), doing laundry but not taking it out of the dryer (I'll wear wrinkly clothes - but he won't, so that means more ironing for him), and yet he still seems to be happy to wake up next to me in the morning.
We have a strange dynamic. I heard once, I believe that Pastor Benji preached on it a couple of years ago, that women have 50,000 words a day that they need to get out of their mouths and they can only get about 25K out during the work day so their spouses are stuck with the remaining half when they get home. Men, are just the opposite, so by the time they get home, they're about talked out. Well, we're just the opposite of THAT. JJ LOVES to talk. Talk talk talk, that one. And he talks all day! He does interviews and writes stories and gets quotes. He talks on the phone more or less all day long. And when he comes home, he wants to talk some more! Sometimes I'll talk, sometimes I won't. And when I don't the conversation usually ends with JJ going, "Honey, you want me to just stop talking?" and me nodding vigorously. And he needs to know that I'm not mad at him. And he needs his hugs and kisses. Both much more often than I do. As Jamie put it so eloquently in a toast at our rehearsal dinner, "JJ was the best male girlfriend EVER!" 'Tis true. I am married to some kind of male/female stereotype hybrid. I'm not sure what to make of that yet.
Then, of course, there's the whole learning-to-live-together situation. I will say, though, to my husband's benefit, that in 6 months he has only left the toilet seat up once. Just once! And he graciously does most of the cleaning. I cook. So in other words, I make messes - and JJ cleans them up. That's okay with me! We're getting better at sharing. I'm getting better at entertaining myself, and he's getting better at not needing days of alone time at a time.
Anyway, it's been 6 months. And loving my husband ain't no small thing. But I don't mind one bit.