there is no blueprint for marriage.
because every marriage is made up of two different people and so it will never look the same.
but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other. we all have different stories but there are similarities and areas of overlap and moments of intersection that teach and instruct and inform and encourage and challenge.
which is what this series is all about. i asked a bunch of friends of mine who have been married for different numbers of years to share a story or a challenge they faced or one thing that really helped them with the hope that someone else somewhere [and hopefully a bunch of someone elses] will benefit from hearing it and be encouraged or challenged in their own story.
you might be married for less than a year and benefit from someone who has just celebrated their 20 year mark.
you might be married for four years and learn something from someone who has been married for just 2.
you might not even be married at all – and there is still something here for you to learn if you will give it a chance.
i just assumed that if we got a bunch of different people from different years of marriage to tell some stories that we would get a very mixed bag of experiences shared.
we did. and i hope you will enjoy them. for some years of marriage i got more than 1 story and am looking to add more as we go along. so if you have a story to share, please email me at brettfish@hotmail.com and some of them might get added to this mix.
in the meantime, i give you ‘Marriage through the years’ –
Marriage Year 1: Meet Kerstin and Carl Fourie
Marriage Year 2: Meet Sally and Benjamin Shannon
Marriage Year 2: Meet Steven and Megan Cottam
Marriage Year 2: Meet Emma and Gordon Whiley
Marriage Year 2: Meet Elaine and Dave Kim
Marriage Year 3: Meet Ruth and Philip Boshoff
Marriage Year 3: Meet Shaun and Samantha Brauteseth
Marriage Year 4: Meet Jade and Sean Poole
Marriage Year 4: Meet Emma and Willie Cocklin
Marriage Year 4: Meet Tessa and Ashley Tuttle
Marriage Year 5: Meet Jackie and Tim Barker
Marriage Year 5: Meet Lindsay and Nate Brown
Marriage Year 5: Meet Lily and Jonathan Dunn
Marriage Year 5: Meet Candice and Matt Fourie
Marriage Year 6: Meet Karen and Alex Powell
Marriage Year 6: Meet Colette and Andrew Tennison
Marriage Year 7: Meet Leanne and Hilton Bennett
Marriage Year 7: Meet Bradley and Vicky Jones
Marriage Year 8: Meet Steven and Kristin Heineman
Marriage Year 9: Meet Anthea and Philip Godsmark
Marriage Year 9: Meet Bettina and Kevin van Antwerpen
Marriage Year 9: Meet Matt and Kathy Allison
Marriage Year 10: Meet Lu-Shane and Marco Alexander
Marriage Year 10: Meet Richard and Wendy Sumner
Marriage Year 10: Meet Megan and Brenton Furniss
Marriage Year 13: Meet Nate and Andrea Milheim
Marriage Year 14: Meet Tim and Laura Tucker
Marriage Year 15: Meet Natasha and Dave Henning
Marriage Year 18: Meet Lara and Chris Lahr
Marriage Year 28: Meet Shelley and Deon Lombard [Parents of Jade Lombard Poole in Year 4 above]
Marriage Year 33: Meet Jo and Ollie Prentice
Marriage Year 45: Meet Costa and Lorraine Mitchell
A while back i put together a series called ‘How to Save your Marriage [before you need to]’ which a whole bunch of other married people contributed to and you can catch up on all of those helpful posts over here.
[…] Filed under: inspire-ations, Love and chocolate, marriage, Relationships, thorts of other people — Leave a comment February 18, 2014 What we learned in our first year of marriage. We haven’t been married for a full year yet, our wedding was on the 06 April 2013. But we have learned so much already. I must confess that our first year hasn’t been that straight forward either. Carl proposed to me just before I got very sick. I had shown signs that I wasn’t well, but we didn’t realise that individually the symptoms weren’t too bad. However when you threw them all together it came to TB Meningitis. Carl proposed when I was really not well, but we found a good day between the bad ones, and headed out to the country where he had organised a nice picnic spot in the middle of a wheat field on a random farm an hour outside of Cape Town. It was beautiful and overwhelming. I couldnt eat any of the picnic. We celebrated the event with close friends, but didn’t spill the beans too far since I wanted to dwell on the event first, before everyone asks you unthought questions – like what school you’ll send your kids to?! Life continued, grasping that I was gonna marry this best friend of mine. Then on the 1st of Jan 2012. I urged Carl to make an appointment for a doctor the next day- I wasn’t feeling that good and feared sinus. I never woke up the next morning – I remember nothing of the night, the pills i swallowed, the stabbing headache that woke me every midnight for the last few weeks. I was talking to Carl apparently, fighting with the ambulance staff, pulled out my drip, fought everyone who wanted to help. I was admitted into ICU and was unconscious for a good African 30 hrs. The journey from there was the slowest ever. Now exactly 2 years later I finally feel like myself again. TB is truly an african sickness, it takes it time to fully show itself in your body and it takes its time to leave, preferring to have yet another cup of tea with you before thinking to leave. The TB was also not a simple version in my lungs but in my brain and spinal cord. A blessing was that we decided to get married a year after I fell over, but the journey was not complete. I remember going to the ‘pre marriage’ course with Carl. A lady took the ‘communication’ course and said, to her, it is the most important tool in marriage. I glanced over that and was way more intrigued and freaked out (at 28yrs old?!!!!) about the sex ed. She was right though. It’s difficult to explain the journey we have been on since our wedding day. The pages of detailed medical facts are not going to assist in explaining what we went through, if one has no idea of TB. What we did learn through this time is this: We learned to communicate: a.) because we had to. When you are humanly tired, you still have reserves. When you are ‘cripple’ tired (like i called myself) – there were no reserves. Hence whatever came upon our path, we had to deal with honestly. My sister always said ‘Being sick makes you honest’ – and oh how true that was. Examples such as: – deciding who had the honour of your few minutes of communication before the eyelids dropped or the brain was too overloaded with thinking; – how to use your energy wisely, what would your priority list look like, and did that include some cuddle time with your husband tonight? – explaining to Carl again that you were not mad at him, but trying to resolve my own frustration with yet another low blow from the illness and still not being healthy after all these months; then asking him to pray this time round on your behalf. That leads me to my next point, we learned to communicate: b.) because there might not be a tomorrow – to sort issues out as soon as the arise and to appreciate the small things in life. This point seems dramatic and emotional, but for Carl it happened over night. It is a blessing that I recovered without brain injury, but it could have turned out differently. There is no time to lie in a sulking mood and ponder about the ‘fight’, but if it is expressed, both parties can deal with it at once, and in case Jesus takes one of us home, there should be a reason less to live in regret. But yet God will call one of us at some point, but he gave us each other for now. So we appreciate every cup of morning coffee in bed together, every prayer between the two of us, every supper at our table, our view, a good day and a new step forward- no matter how small. But most of all we know that this is not a relationship between the two of us, but that God is the leader and the glue in this relationship. He is our all and in Him we trust. He granted us the gift of marriage when no one thought it was possible, but our mighty God has never forsaken or left us alone, even in the darkest and pain filled moments. “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Col 1, 17 [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] Marriage through the Years: Stories, tips and advice from couples who have been married for differen… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] We have been married for 2 years and one month. The first 2 years have been really hard. Marriage is the most challenging thing I've had to do in my whole life. But it's also the most rewarding (besides following Christ). My aunt is a counselor and a deacon in our church, so we went to her for some counseling. The key thing I've learned is to learn to communicate. Most fights arise from miscommunication. Talk things through, even when things get heated. Very importantly, do not break each other down. Since counseling, we have both learned to sacrifice more for the other and both of us are ending up winning, because we are receiving that gift of sacrifice, which in return makes us happy and we are then willing to sacrifice more. Marthunis and Jennifer [married 1 Dec, 2011] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this 'Marriage through the years' series and read other peoples' stor… […]
[…] been collecting stories for the two popular series i am running on my blog at the moment, namely, ‘Marriage through the Years’ [stories, struggles and advice from a variety of people who have been married for a differing […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] And it still is, but in a very different way. Very few people tell you that falling in love is not a once-off thing. That it has to happen every single morning. And sometimes – more often than not- you have to force it. I love this man I’m married to now. He has more lines on his face, a heck of a lot more grey hairs (lets blame the 3 kids…) and he knows a lot more about me that I ever hoped he would – definitely not all good. But I guess that’s real intimacy. Knowing it all and still loving it all. He’s as solid as a rock when I’m all over the place. I’m vocal when he’s silent. The classic introvert, extrovert partnership. This marriage thing is not for the faint-hearted. Thankfully, even at the start of our relationship, we were under no illusion that we were each other’s saviours. No knights on white horses here. Thankfully, we both knew a God who had done that job already. This has made all the difference in the last 8 years. I don’t know how we could have done it – the 3 international moves, the 3 pregnancies, births, sleepless nights, job stress, sickness, redundancy, in-laws…. without handing it all to God, together, regularly. We would have crumbled under the pressure. Life with 3 kids has been especially difficult. They’re lovely, don’t get me wrong. They just take up ALL of your time and sap you dry. I dream of the day when we can leave them with family and head off for a romantic weekend, just the two of us… where we’ll probably just sleep. And I really do mean sleep. (Living on the other side of the globe to your family does create a problem in that regard, so it may still be a long wait for the dream to become reality.) Some well meaning older and wiser folk advised us when we first got married to hold to the motto: ‘Divorce is never an option!’… The reality is that divorce is always an option. It’s everywhere – our tv screens, the neighbour, now my best friend. It’s a threat we should take seriously and never stop working against. We’ve found that laughter, fun and adventure is like medicine. Its not always easy, but it helps to not take life too seriously and to not sweat the small stuff. Save it for when things get really tough, which they inevitably will in any marriage that lasts a lifetime. [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch more stories from different yea… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] Filed under: Love and chocolate, marriage, Relationships, thorts of other people — Leave a comment March 15, 2014 We have definitely gotten through some challenges in nearly 18 years of marriage. The challenges that seemed to be a big deal once, I actually look back and laugh about now. At the time, the toilet seat being left up or the tooth paste cap off was no laughing matter. Now, there are bigger challenges of forgiving each other for things that seem unforgivable; learning to communicate about our differences of parenting styles rather than fight about them; learning to ask for help when we can’t do it on our own… It has been through overcoming these challenges together that we have come to a place of trust for one another which has led us to an accountability. I can remember not that long ago if Chris would have said to me that I was being too hard on my daughter or had any kind of critique of my parenting style I would have gotten very defensive. Today I allow that criticism to be a mirror for me to see myself as others see me (especially my own daughters). Marriage has become that safe place where I can be myself and yet be challenged to be my better self. I have been reading a book that talks about how marriage is not just about making us happy, but making us holy. This can not be so if we are constantly defending ourselves to be the right one. Things began to change for us when I realized that Chris wasn’t criticizing me to put me down, but to build me up into a better mom. Once I trusted this, I began to make changes in myself which liberated me from a deep rooted pride. I recognized more of my own brokenness and became more forgiving of his brokenness. We have learned gentle ways to remind each other when we are stepping into that area of struggle or sin. We both had to recognize our own pride in order to break it down. This came through confession. The beauty of confession is that it brings freedom for the one confessing, and a avenue for grace for the one receiving that confession. Sharing vulnerably with each other has become a process filled with grace. This grace moves us towards change so that we can become who God created us to be. We have learned to love each other for who we are today but also to love who we are becoming. [To head back to the beginning of this series and read a whole bunch of different stories, click her… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this Marriage through the Years series and read a whole lot of storie… […]
[…] Filed under: Love and chocolate, marriage, Relationships, thorts of other people — Leave a comment March 21, 2014 We met at UCT in 1975, followers of Christ and both students. Already – two keys to a long-lasting relationship – our Christian faith has held us in good times and difficulties; our keenness to learn and be curious about life, has kept our relationship interesting. After completing our degrees in Education and Librarianship , we decided to work for a year before making a firm choice to get married. So we had actually been dating for 5 -6 years. We were really good friends, and so that lead to the saying “friends first, lovers later’. Relationships that are based just on sex, not respectful friendship, are bound to founder on the rocks of real life. As friends, we still enjoy each others’ company and doing things together. Whilst engaged and during the first year of marriage, my husband lost all his hair – a condition called Alopecia Areata Universalis. A tough situation for anyone. Ollie had had the most beautiful, abundant, auburn hair. On his first visit to my family home, my Mom commented; “My, but that boy has a lovely head of hair!” Those days, hair was “in” and if one was bald or shaven, people assumed one was either gay,or dying of cancer. For years Ollie wore a wig ( a real nuisance and very hot in summer). But then came the freeing day when, after a nudge from God during a sermon, Ollie decided just to be himself and go “wigless” and become one of “God’s shaven few”. I am so glad! Interestingly enough, the boys at his school have always been accepting and curious about his baldness. Adults are the ones less accepting. That was the first major loss we faced together. Since then we have faced many other losses: illnesses; deaths of friends and family members; serious accidents; loss of friends through emigration; financial strain. But with lots of daily communication; keeping a sense of humour; listening to each other; and being alert for God’s leading and wisdom, here we are looking forward to our 33rd Anniversary! [To return to the beginning of this Marriage through the Years series and read a whole lot of storie… […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of this Marriage through the Years series and read a whole lot of storie… […]
[…] Marriage through the Years – Really great series where friends of mine who have been married for different amounts of years shared some thoughts and wisdom […]
[…] [To return to the start of this series and take a look at Marriage through many years, click here] […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of the series and get glimpses from 45 years of marriage, click here] […]
[…] will change – last few months have been posting more of other peoples’ thoughts such as this marriage series we did, most of the posts on race [which i am looking to dive into a little deeper when we get […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of the series and get glimpses from 45 years of marriage, click here] […]
[…] [To return to the beginning of the series and get glimpses from 45 years of marriage, click here] […]
[…] a re-post of a post of my “I suck at marriage but my marriage doesn’t suck” post for his series on marriage. I jumped in on the Faith Feminisms synchroblog with a tongue-in-cheek piece about being […]
[…] Marriage through the years… part Intro [4424 […]
[…] Marriage through the Years – this stunning series was created by friends of mine married for from 1 year all the way to […]
[…] also a big help for those who are trying to figure out being married to hear from others who have journeyed for various numbers of years at that? And again and again it has shown to be true of the so-called Taboo Topics, where stories […]
[…] more tips are on the way so watch this space… but in the meantime maybe check out some of these marriage stories from different people who have celebrated between 1 and 45 years of […]