Monday, February 28, 2011

4 Months & 4 Days :)


That is how long I’ve been married as of today. I feel as if it has been longer though. Truth is, people can place whatever standard on marriage they want, Master and I were living as a married couple a lot longer than just those 4 months and 4 days. We did the paperwork but that piece of paper hasn’t changed anything about us, who we are or how we treat each other.
We decided to get married because we loved each other and making that official didn’t change that.
I hear all the time how statistics say that because we got married before this age or because we lived together before we got married we are more likely to divorce sooner rather than later or not at all. The reason for this, they say, is because when you aren’t married you still have that freedom of leaving and after you are married that freedom is blatantly gone. I don’t see that happening to Master and me because nothing has changed. Our opinions and pet peeves are the same. We didn’t consider ourselves free to look around before and we certainly don’t now.
Having said that, I can’t say that some things haven’t changed for the better.
Both of us have matured more and are working harder to resolve issues that we have. Both of us are working towards our goals, even when things get hard and we want to give up. Both of us love each other and our baby girl and want to strive to get past every mountain that suddenly leaps up in front of us for each other and her.
Up until this point we haven’t lived with each other. For a while we lived with my dad, and then we lived with his parents and then he moved to Denver and I back to Alamogordo for the remainder of my pregnancy and then I moved back up to Colorado Springs and he did as well and we went back to living with his parents but as of tonight, we are officially not living with anyone but each other. We finally have our own place! I can’t wait to see how much easier things become for us now that we can truly live as husband and wife. I’m excited. Scared… nervous.. but also excited. :)

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Growing In Our Relationship

Master and I have come a really long ways in our relationship. Because of my past I have a lot of issues. Some of them have been diagnosed by a counselor and I’m still learning more and trying to work and fix the ones I have. Those issues have been the biggest challenge we’ve been confronted by in our relationship. Because of my BPD I would often get angry just at him wanting to stop at a gas station and get coffee or soda because when I set up an agenda in my mind it would throw me off and make me angry to change that. I couldn’t deviate off of that path at all unless it was my idea. I would get uncontrollably angry and not understand why which would only make me angrier just to make me feel really bad later.
We didn’t learn I had this particular issue until we had been together almost a year and I started going to a counselor to get help because I was falling into depression from all of our fighting. Once we realized what we had we both started to work towards helping me with it but it was a long journey before any improvement could be seen and I still sometimes have problems with it.
It has just been recently, since getting married actually, that I noticed the difference. Before I would get mad if he would call and ask if there was money for him to get coffee on the way to work. I would freak out because I hadn’t scheduled money out for that and just start panicking that we were going to run out and not be able to pay bills and so I would tell him no after getting really pissed off which would have both of our guards up. Then, I would calm down and look at the budget and then we would go and eat out that night and that would make him angry. He would wonder why we could afford to eat out but he couldn’t get a coffee and that would lead to a fight that night.
Once we figured it out we were really able to work towards fixing it. I don’t even really know what we did. I think part of it was that he became more understanding because he realized that I did have an actual issue and once I realized what was causing me to get angry I didn’t get more angry when I would get angry. I would calm myself down and talk myself through what happened and why it happened. I started asking myself ‘why did you get mad about that?’ and over time that question turned into ‘should you get mad over that’ and now I am noticing that I don’t get mad at all.
The first time I really, truly noticed it to the point things clicked enough to where I could write this was about a week or two ago when Master got pulled over and got a ticket. Before I would have been angry and upset that he had been inconsiderate and now I had to stress over coming up with the money to pay for it. But that didn’t happen! I just told him it was okay, we would try to get it dismissed and if not we would pay the ticket. It wasn’t until that night that I realized he could lose his license if he was over the point limit which was very possible that I freaked. That kind of change and stress was too much and I did over react but I was able to realize that within the hour and apologize and we got past it. Thinking back on it today I realized that the reason I freaked was illogical and if I had just sat and thought about it I wouldn’t have gotten mad at all!
The reason I was thinking about it today was because he got pulled over again and got another ticket. He says he wasn’t speeding and I believe him for the most part. I got a little stressed because now we have to figure out two tickets but I didn’t get mad. I didn’t yell at him. I tried to support him and get him to calm down before he got to work and for the most part I think I did a good job. He seemed to feel a little better by the time we got off the phone.
All of that just makes me so happy. I have issues and I know I have issues and I want to fix them and to see them finally starting to get better makes me feel as if all the trying and working towards it is worth it. It is just really nice to finally see some results and to know that my Master and my husband are the reason for those results. It makes me feel really happy, supported and fortunate to have him as my partner.
More than anything, I look forward to improving more with the man I love. :)