By John ‘Dare Okafor
You can still remember the day you got married, you were seeing stars and fireworks and you didn’t want the euphoria of that moment to end; you already had the pattern of your marriage mapped out in corridors of your heart. Just because love exists between you and Femi, you both must be the perfect couple after marriage, so you had thought. You both met a year ago, and you thought you had known everything about him that is to know, and he sincerely felt that same.
Days after your honeymoon, things began to normalize, reality comes to play.
‘’ Wait, in the actual sense, do I have to live with this man for the rest of my life?’’ You asked yourself.
You thought you’ve already answered this kind of question during your marriage counseling session, but now you realize you were both caught up with the ecstasy of the idea of getting married, but not that of living together. At the early stage of your marriage, you discovered that he snores loudly while sleeping and you’ve to hit him gently to stop, which infuriated you a great deal.
And when you told him about it, subsequent days after, he denied it. You got angry at yourself because you didn’t discover this before marriage. You are confident about his love for you, but you find it hard fitting yourself into this new role of compromise, you didn’t grow up having to compromise this much for the people you love.
You realize Femi had communication issues. He tends always to avoid talking about things when it is essential he does, and whenever he wrongs you; he prefers buying you gifts without addressing the problem. Now he has learned to communicate better and stay true to himself while being fair to you in the process.
Marriage is not the idealistic love stories you watched in Disney movies while growing up. That’s because no one talked about the true issues that couples have to face that makes them human. You were also a proud version of yourself when you got married. You were selfish, you were not in tune with yourself, you were a people pleaser, and you had no idea what you wanted with your life.
Your imperfections also affected Femi, no wonder they were days when you both go to bed without talking to each other. If only you had seen from the beginning that you both didn’t understand each other, maybe you would have given room for further improvement.
Currently, you both now have walls built around you, which took you both a long time to build, and you are not willing to let go of that easily. You’ve both learned to be better versions of yourselves, by learning from what the other had already mastered.
You now love Femi more than ever, this is the true love you weren’t told about. Femi has now not only become your husband, but also your best friend. You’ve both grown, and sometimes you’ve both learned the hard way.
Today would make it your tenth marriage anniversary, and it has now become evident to you that there is no happily ever after, after weddings, without intentional steps by both parties to make it work. Also that the real happily ever after is in the compromise of walking the path of life with someone else who has no idea of who he is, and he’s discovering this on the way, while you also discover yourself in the process.
