Becoming a Family

I come from a wonderful, albeit, unconventional family. The best family I could wish for, flaws and all. But the thing about the family you're born into is that it's the only family you know. You develop your relationships with these people from the time you take your first breath. Your relationship with your mom, your dad, your brother, sister, etc forms alongside your own personal development. Day in and day out you form bonds with these people through all of life's events. These are the most natural relationships in the world.

Then you get married. Now you have a new family. A pure, virgin, untainted family that has not had to endure years of hissy fits, adolescence, sibling rivalry, and questionable dating choices. That wedding day is a new start for a new future with this person who has now become your number one, one and only. Now, all of a sudden you are acutely aware of how damn tough it is to develop a lifetime bond with someone you have not actually spent your lifetime with. You have already become a contributing member of society (hopefully) and have a pretty good idea of who you are as an independent person. So now, you mean to tell me, I have to figure it out all over again with this person?

Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that you have to change who you inherently are as a person when you get married. But you do change! You have to change a lot of little things that you didn't even know were there in the first place. Because, guess what, that adolecent "this is who I am, deal with it" attitude will land you in divorce court before you can write all your thank you notes! (I obviously exagerate for effect)

So how do you build a family from scratch, without the history? I'll tell you how I figured it out. I could not for the life of me understand why my realtionship with my husband wasn't as effortless as my relationships with my mother and my brother; my two best friends in the world. I thought to myself, "this is my HUSBAND! The most important person in the world to me, our communication should be simple and fluent, and it's not! What am I doing wrong?!" Then it hit me like a slap in the face. How can I expect an effortless relationship to develop simply because I said "I do"? I have put 24 and 22 years into my relationships with my mother and brother respectively and only the last 3 have made the whole ordeal worth it! My family saw some really REALLY tough years. Those relationships had to endure extensive periods of growing pains.

And, you see, every relationship that is built outside your immediate family has to endure the same growing pains if it aspires to be as strong or stronger. No relationship is ever effortless, it just gets easier and more comfortable. And whenever I feel frustrated that my husband and I aren't communicating as easily as I would like or that our relationship isn't as strong as the relationship I have with my mom and my brother, I just tell myself this is my baby family and it's going to take work. And I remind myself all the time:
They didn't say it would be easy, but they sure said it would be worth it!