Bonding with my wife

My wife and I went to engaged encounter a few months before our wedding.  We spent some quality time there, and though some of the talking points they gave were already discussed prior to our arrival it was nonetheless a very meaningful weekend.  As I remember sitting with my bride to be there was a very lovely couple in their late 40s with grown children.  They spoke about dating your spouse, and deciding to love, rather than just expecting a romantic love to tingle and grow without work.  I'd never thought that marriage is just something that happens, or for that matter is easy, but I never thought about dating my wife.  I've been married for nearly six years, and I know next to nothing about "dating" now, but I know a lot about my wife.

When I married my wife I was working for an advertising agency editing video.  If I didn't know you, I'd just say I was editing commercials, but that wouldn't be accurate, the most "commercial" video I worked on lived on the internet, not the television, but regardless it was a major ad agency for one of the largest clients in the world.  I was younger, far more care free, and to be honest way more egocentric.  I was just as talkative and loud as I am now, but perhaps with a "bit" less tack, but I can't lie I still don't have much tack, and that has become part of what makes me, me.  I was a father about 18 months after I was married, which meant we didn't have a honeymoon baby, but didn't exactly spend a lot of time as a couple alone either.  By about the time we had our second child, 3 years into our marriage, that couple we heard at engaged encounter made sense to me.  My wife was working full time, we had a one year old and she was pregnant with our second, I quit my job, and completely changed my career, starting all over.  A month after my son Sean was born we moved.  So in the span of 9 months, my wife quit her full time job got a part time one, I quit my job, got a new one, we moved and we had a second child...I'm tired just writing that.

I really needed to date my wife, I needed to get to know her again.  She spent all day with our kids, still worked (and still does), and I was in a new job working all sorts of hours of the day, switching shifts far more than is good for a human being.  It isn't that I changed dramatically in a day, or she did either, we were living our lives, and if we didn't have an hour to talk we would realize a few months later that the other person may be really struggling, changing, growing, getting depressed, be elated, be sad, and just plain living life without the other person.

I married Cristina to be together for life, not just a lifetime.  I met my wife and knew I had found a person who's personality was strong and vibrant enough to deal with the brash person I can be, and I won't lie that is hard.  My wife and I compliment each other, we make a whole, which really is what marriage is.  Thus the dating.

See I don't believe people change in the grand scheme of things, but I do believe that we progress on our path.  If you aren't careful you come to find out you have diverged on slightly different paths, and the two roads you met on that became one, are two again, this doesn't signify the end, but rather a misstep in relationship timing.  When you fall out of sync and path for too long the movies love the line "I don't even know you anymore" happens, but more specifically you have chosen a path that no longer involves being with someone else, and I don't think this is from lack of working in marriage, but rather lack of dating.

I haven't been married long in comparison to some, but I have learned a bit in my short time, and I know I have continually grown, evolved and refined who I am, if my wife thought I was the same man I was 6 or even 8 years ago we'd be in trouble.  But whether it is a morning breakfast at her favorite place, or an evening on the couch under a blanket we have reached out to each other to bond in a way best described as dating;  Coming together at a particular time to focus on the other person, and I can't think of any relationship that won't be made better by doing that.