I wanted to be a feminist. Also, Pretty Woman.

I wasn’t entirely sure what either of those meant in my early teens, but I looked up to strong women who were the opposite of me, and Vivian.

I tried to laugh like Julia Roberts, and once on a date I spit my gum in the grass trying to be cute like her… Somehow it didn’t have the same effect.

Then when my Edward came along, named Heath, I felt certain I was ready for marriage.

It was easy, right? All you have to do is always be right.

That attitude, coupled with my trust issues, were a recipe for purgatory for my sweet new husband. He thought I’d make a good wife.

Big mistake. Huge.

Finally after a year of always looking over his shoulder because I was double checking to see if he was really where he said he was, and never being entirely sure if I was going to ambush him when he got home over something he didn’t even know I was upset about, he said, We need to talk.

Heath has x-ray vision when it comes to hearts, and he saw right through me. He knew what my problem was, so our talk went something like this…

Sally Anne, I love you. If you can’t believe I love you, then our marriage is going to be very hard, but I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to convince you. I need you to believe it now.

I’ll never forget the look on his face as he said those words to me. It was a now-or-never moment. He wasn’t threatening to end us—certainly not—but he was making me an offer I couldn’t refuse…to believe I was loved.

Everything changes when you believe you’re loved.

A few years later we were invited to a beach marriage retreat which was a horrifying exercise in awkwardness and TMI. We skipped most of it, but we did go to one session where we learned something very valuable.

The husband leading the session said, Marriage is not 50/50. If you expect everything to always be even and you shut down after you feel you’ve done your half, your marriage will suffer. Marriage is sometimes 80/20. You have to be willing when your spouse cannot—for whatever reason—contribute more than 20% on any given day, to be the other 80%.

That’s the for better or worse, sickness and health part. If you’re married to a horrible person, I’m sorry. This probably won’t help you.

But if you’re married to a person who loves you, don’t make the mistake I made the first year, where I was always keeping score, always looking for proof that he loves me, he loves me not, making sure everything was 50/50.

Why did I do that? It goes back to always needing to be right. If it proved to be true that he didn’t love me, then I could tell myself I knew it. I was right.

Do yourself a favor and believe you’re loved. And stop trying to be right all the time.

I know, I failed at being the feminist She-Ra I imagined myself to be.

But our marriage is fun, and I’m a little easier to love.

 

 

Love is as strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave… Mighty waters cannot extinguish love; raging rivers cannot sweep it away.

~ Song of Solomon 8:6-7