Spoiler alert for the young and in love . . . marriage is hard.

 

One more for anyone considering a life abroad. That’s hard too.

 

You read it here first.

 

My wife and I have been living both of those realities for a good, long time and to be honest we thought we were pretty solid on both.  Oh we knew they were hard (we crossed those bridges ages ago) but we’ve pushed through that part.  We’ve survived BOTH honeymoon phases and the crashes that followed.  We’ve learned (through repeated trial and even more repeated error) how to be on different pages and stay in the same book.  We’ve set up systems for everything from fighting better fights to dealing with my crazy travel schedule.

We’re good at this.  That’s what we thought.

Until we found out that we’re not.

Here’s the thing — we recently discovered that our brilliant systems have been skillfully (if not consciously) crafted for the sole purpose of protecting us from the hard stuff.

We call a “time out” when things get heated to protect ourselves from saying stupid things that we don’t really mean (man, I wish we had known how to do that in our first year).  We “switch modes” when Daddy travels so she can focus on home and I can focus on work (because both of those are really important).

They’re not BAD plans . . . but they’re not enough either.

Our systems protect us.  They have us playing good, solid defense but the best case scenario in any ALL defensive endeavors is that you break even . . . and breaking even only happens when your defense is perfect.  Ours is not.

We want more than a break even marriage AND we want more than a so-so life abroad.

So here is my Expat Husband’s Manifesto 

 

My wife will be my first choice.

I am blessed.  Super blessed.  Hyper blessed.  Hashtag blessed with good friends.  I genuinely feel guilty sometimes when I think about the number of BFF’s that I have all over the world and I absolutely love spending time with them.  They are worth every long trip and every late night.

But my wife will ALWAYS be the one that I pursue the hardest, invest the most in and sacrifice more for.

 

I will connect when we are disconnected.

I won’t turn our relationship off when we are apart.  I won’t “check in” periodically but I will work so she knows that I have never checked out.  I’ll tell her when something funny happens.  I’ll let her in when I’m stressed out.  I’ll text her pictures of things that remind me of her and I’ll do my dead level best with those emoji things.

If she is out of sight I will be intentional about keeping her in my mind.

 

 

I will make it real.

There are so many things in my head that rarely make it through my mouth.  I will work to change that.  She is so incredible.  So beautiful.  So smart.  So creative.  So fun.  So many things that go unsaid and consequently never become real.  I will choke the assumption that she already knows what my brain is thinking.

I will turn my best thoughts and my heartfelt intentions into tangible, touchable realities.

 

 

I will close the gap.

I travel for work.  She stays home.  I’m the extrovert.  She’s the inny.  I go places and I meet people and they become a part of my world.  She has never seen those places or met those people.  There is a whole part of my life that is a blurry fog to her.

We’re going to close that gap together.  Not all at once and not in huge overwhelming doses but over time and as we are able I am going to take her to the far off places and connect the faces to the names.

 

I will get the order right.

Our marriage does not exist inside of our life abroad — or my job — or even our family.  On the contrary, our lives together are the setting for all of the rest of it.  The traveling, the adventures, the bumbling foreigner stories, the good things and the hard things are all side plots in a bigger story.  Our story.

We could lose our visas tomorrow.  “THIS THING” that we are doing could change a hundred times but we will still be doing this thing together.

 

 

I will stay on course.

We have set our trajectory towards “old and gray.”  We have unanimously decided that, as we grow old, we want to do MORE of our lives together instead of less.  We want to be THAT old couple who always go together.

We’re not there yet.  We’re still in the crazy pace, divide and conquer, you pick up the kids and I’ll stop at the veggie shop phase of life . . . but we’re pointed in that direction.  As we are able and on a consistently growing scale we are going to move towards doing more and more life together.

 

I will fall forward.

This would be so much better if I was already good at it.  I would love it if I could just write words in a blog post and make it all true, unshakable and resolute — but we’ve been doing this long enough to know that’s not how it works.

I WILL ABSOLUTELY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY DO ALL OF THESE THINGS.

Until I don’t.

And then I’ll do them better the next day.

 

I love my wife and I love our life abroad.