The Perfect Marriage

"You guys have the PERFECT marriage" "George is the PERFECT husband" "Oh my god, George is so spoiled to have a wife like you"

A hundred times a week, I hear some variation of how perfect Geo and my marriage is or what kind of spouse one of us is. It's people who've known us for years, it's people who've just met one or both of us, it's complete strangers. And quite frankly, it's annoying.

It's annoying because people assume we don't do anything and our marriage is effortless OR they assume one of us is manipulating the other or has the other one "trained".

What is wrong with people? Is it envy? (maybe) Is it ignorance? (maybe) Is it something else? (maybe)

For one, I am NOT the perfect wife, Geo is NOT the perfect husband, nor do we have PERFECT marriage. We have our share of short comings, we have our share of fights, and we have to work hard for the relationship that we DO have. Apparently our relationship looks effortless from the outside, which, honestly, annoys andpleases me. It annoys me because people are assuming that one of us is perfect or has the other one trained-which is just flat out rude-but it pleases me because obviously we are doing something correctly if people think we have a great marriage.

I wish I could tell people that a marriage like ours takes time, commitment and work. It didn't happen overnight and it's something that we make an effort to work on every single day. It's easy to get caught up in the day to day working-parenting-shopping-cooking-cleaning routine and neglect your relationship. You have to make TIME for yourselves and your marriage. Geo and I were actually discussing this exact thing the other night (after hearing for the umpteenth time how amazing our marriage was) People seem to forget that a good relationship takes work and effort-as with everything else in life, you only get back what you put in.

Geo and I choose to put time and effort into our relationship because we believe that having a healthy marriage will in turn make a healthy family. If we are happy, our family is happy and that's our ultimate goal: a happy family.

Next time you admire someone's relationship or spouse, take the time to think about what it is that you admire-do you admire that Mrs. X's husband never speaks sarcastically to her? Do you admire that the W's spend time together and actually ENJOY themselves? Find what you are envious of and try to recreate it in your OWN relationship...happy marriages/relationships lead to happy families and isn't that what you should be striving for?