Love.

Love is a ridiculous, silly, tricky thing. When we get married, we picture ourselves growing old with a person, sitting on the front porch in our matching rocking chairs, him reading the paper, her knitting or arranging flowers or doing some "old lady" activity. We imagine our lives together, how it will be having kids, grandkids, taking vacations, all the normal "growing old together" dreams, right? Problem is that seldom happens anymore.
I've been married 14 years. Got married at 21 and immediately (literally within days) began our family, having four children over the next five years. It didn't take me long to realize that all that crap we fantasize about when we get married is just that... a fantasy. Yes it can really happen but most of the time we don't think about the pain and struggle it takes to get there. We also don't look at the old couple holding hands walking into the store and think "I wonder how many marriages they had before this" but in reality chances are more than one. But we don't think about those things because we see what we want to see.
I've been married nearly 14 years. Sometimes I love it and am so happy we have outlasted both our parents marriages and feel good about giving the kids a stable childhood- but really that's what we let people see. The reality is, we fight more often than we don't, making up NEVER involves the bedroom, and my kids have moved probably 10 times already. We don't see our families almost ever, we make friends in new places just to leave them, I am a single mom every other year, and it is VERY difficult. For the past 9 months my relationship with my husband has been based on a few text messages here and there and a 15 minute phone call once a month if I'm lucky. We grow apart, become indifferent, sincerely don't give a shit, and then something so simple he says can make my hardened heart melt and I'm his all over again.

Now, when he gets home and isn't feeling so nice and turns out he didn't mean it, I may have other things to say.