Every Skinny Tree

I don't like it when people talk about the sex part, as if whenever they talk about sex they are being more honest.
Sex is sex and it is what it is and what you make it. But your mind and your heart have to be nice to each other because there is no guarantee that anything will be what you want it to be.

But you don't really know that person (it is a joke to think you do). And he doesn't really know you, he just knows how you are whenever he is around.
You don't want to tell him everything, but you end up spilling your guts anyway.
He doesn't want to know everything but he finds it out in the long run. Every night you go to bed wondering if you have broken things down beyond repair. Every morning you wake up thinking that, with God's own help, you might not hurt him really badly today; and that is good.
You begin to see it would be like this with anyone you marry so you stop telling yourself that you picked the wrong friend to spend the rest of your life with.
And you decide that your marriage won't be like what your parents or anyone else has had because that would be really annoying.
It is, incredibly, very strange and lonely unless you remember to take care of yourself. You often forget and want to be lazy in light of the idea that there is this other person who takes better care of you, most of the time.
You become very generous and stop thinking that people are worse or better than they really are and you start to laugh at things that used to bother you and you learn to ask people not to step on you and the ones you love. Or you become angry and selfish. But at least you get to choose how you react because I don't think you really get to choose when it comes to the spiritual timing of the marriage.
When it is time to make all those promises, it just is. I think that is how God made it. He just knows what is best and how stupid we are and He moves you around and enables you to take a risk and make some promises. Hopefully you remember to ask Him to help you keep them because sometimes you get caught up in what everyone else is doing: how they "do" marriage.
The practical aspect begins very small at first, then builds until you see that you are doing it. Two and one half years go by and you decide to go easy on the process (like your psychiatrist told you to).
I must admit that marriage must be very different for each person. This idea is sometimes lost when we give advice or answer questions.
There is a poem "Hold my hand, so I can look at the stars". (I have never known if this line belongs to G.E. Patterson or not, but he said it at a reading when I met him... so I think it was him). For me that is what it is like: trying not to lose my way, knowing that someone wants to help, even though I am not trying very hard... he simply wants to help because I asked him to... and it is only sort of vague why I even asked. I know it is only like this for me because this is what my husband has made it for me.
Marriage makes me like a House Sparrow in Central Park returning to the same foreign place every time because it has become home. Maybe it was romance that brought me here but what is inside me tries not to fight it without consent of the season.