I’m just going to cut to the chase. I haven’t written a blog post in over a year. Life has been as crazy as ever, and as you can probably tell from the title of this post, I am in a completely new life stage.

I am now a wife! I married my boyfriend of over three years a little over two months ago on a chilly Saturday afternoon in January. And when I say “chilly” I mean it was 13 degrees chilly. The whirlwind of graduating college, celebrating holidays with family, participating church functions, preparing for our wedding, getting married, and moving halfway across the country really left me little time to reflect on perhaps the most exciting time of my life so far. All this happened between December 15, 2017, and January 11, 2018. And yes, that is less than a month, so I am sure you can imagine just how exciting all of this was.

The first full week of us living in our new home together consisted of unpacking all of my things (my husband Ed already lived in our apartment before I moved in), buying the necessities that were left on our wedding registry,  and grocery shopping for basically everything. When my husband lived on his own, he didn’t cook for himself. It’s a wonder that he is still alive because of how little he ate. He didn’t even own salt and pepper! We had to stock the pantry and refrigerator in order for me to attempt to make meals for us.

We seemed to settle in to married life seamlessly in those first few days. As a couple in ministry, our Sunday dinner conversation consisted of talking about how the services had gone that day. I had already somewhat adjusted to teaching the children’s church class, and I loved getting to know the new families in our church that I had not met before. Everything was falling in to place, just as it should.

Then Ed left me. He left me to go to work that day, but it still felt like he had left me! It was the first time we had been separated for more than a couple of hours since we had been married. On Monday morning, I kissed him goodbye as he left for work that day, and that’s when I actually had the time to reflect on everything that had transpired in the last week and a half. And that’s when I started crying. Crying because I missed my family. Crying because I started to feel like I wasn’t a good enough wife. Crying because some unexpected expectations were actually at the forefront of my mind and I didn’t even have the slightest idea that they had been there all along.

What do I mean by “unexpected expectations”? Well, I’m glad you asked. These unexpected expectations aren’t preconceived ideas that are the typical expectations everyone warns you about when you first get engaged. Here’s a list of some of those expectations people warned me not to have when I first got married:

• “Don’t expect him to be able to read your mind.”
• “Don’t expect him to understand why you’re crying or you’re sad.”
• “He’s probably going to leave his socks everywhere, so don’t be mad at him. Men are slobs.” (yes, I actually heard this one)
• “Don’t expect him to help with the chores all the time.”
• “Don’t expect him to be more romantic now that you’re married.”
• “Don’t expect him to change.”

These are just a few of the things I have heard from well meaning people. Fortunately, I never really expected these things, so I could easily dismiss them from my mind. The most common thing that both Ed and I heard separately during our engagement was not to have any expectations at all. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job at that. Until that Monday morning.

That Monday morning, as I sat on the couch in out quiet one bedroom apartment, I realized that I had expectations that no one told me I would have. And these expectations were not about my husband. They were about myself. I only had a few that I could identify, but they all happened to monopolize my thinking. Here are those expectations that I want you as a future bride to decide not to dwell on.

My Skills as a Wife

I am going to be completely honest. I did not actually know how to cook when we first got married. I knew how to follow a recipe and I guess I was a little bit better at cooking than Ed, but I basically panicked every time it was time for me to start cooking dinner. I wouldn’t even let Ed in the kitchen with me while I was cooking because I was too embarrassed that I didn’t know what I was doing. Every time I set the table, I was worried that I was going to feed him something that was absolutely disgusting and he would be stuck choking down horrid food because he was too nice to tell me how gross it was.

This is just one example of things I felt as though a wife should be good at as soon as she says “I do.” That growing list includes knowing how to do laundry (well), decorating a home, keeping the apartment spotless, grocery shopping without spending a fortune, knowing how much food to make for two people (I’m from a family of ten, so that didn’t come naturally to me at all), and the list goes on.

Meeting My Husband’s Needs

I have always been able to read people. I’m not a huge talker, and I would rather listen to and watch people than be the center of attention in any conversation. When I was a secretary in college, I could always tell when it was a good time to ask my boss a question based on what kind of mood he was in. I have worked with children for many years, and children are pretty easy to read, especially since they usually say everything they are thinking. I knew God had a sense of humor, but I didn’t know that He would take it out on me when He gave me my husband.

Sometimes I feel like Ed is the only person in the world that I can’t read. And that’s funny because he is the most honest person I know. He says it like it is with pretty much everything, and he usually tells me exactly how he’s feeling. But for some reason, I just can’t get over that. He should totally be more complicated than that, am I right? I feel like he has to be feeling something or thinking something that he’s not telling me about, but he truly isn’t. Although he tells me what he’s feeling, that does’t mean I can read his mind.

Since I can’t read his mind, I have to ask him what he’s thinking or feeling if he hasn’t already told me. So in my brilliant mind, I decide to instead guess what he’s thinking and I am usually way off. Ed doesn’t think like I do. This is something I really struggled with at the beginning of our marriage because I was always asking him if he was okay any time he was quiet. I would constantly say things like, “I feel like I’m supposed to do this,” or “I feel like I’m supposed to say this,” just because I thought it was something a wife did. I thought that if I didn’t know exactly what to say or what to do just at the right time without any prompting from my husband then I wasn’t meeting his needs. And that could not be further from the truth.

Comparing Our Marriage to Others

The last thing that I did was expect our marriage to be just like someone else’s. I didn’t even realize that that’s what I was doing until I realized I was comparing myself to other wives. These first two problems I dealt with (my skills as a wife and meeting my husband’s needs) both stem from this last issue. The things that I didn’t know how to do or deal with were all things that I saw other wives excel in so I thought that I would be able to do the same thing.

The problem with comparison is that I was comparing myself as a newlywed wife to other wives who had been married for much longer than I. And that’s just not fair to me. I have no idea how those women were when they were newlyweds, but I just figured they were always this way.

Solution to These Expectations

After a lot of prayer and a lot of quiet time, the Lord showed me the solution to my problems.

1. I needed to accept that I wasn’t going to be good at everything just because I felt like I should be good at it. I shouldn’t do anything to impress others or to feel better about myself as a wife. The Bible says in Colossians 3:23, “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.”
2. I needed to accept that I wasn’t going to ever be able to meet all of Ed’s needs. Only God can do that. I can’t read his mind and God doesn’t expect me to do that. I need to love and honor my husband. These are two things that I can do that don’t require any special talents or abilities.
3. I needed to stop comparing our marriage and my role as a wife to other people. Comparison never helped me before, so why would it help me now that I’m married?

My biggest takeaway from these observations that I made is that I love my marriage for what it is. Our marriage is my favorite because it’s ours. The more I try to model myself after another wife’s role or the more I try to conform our marriage to someone else’s the less authentic our marriage will become.

Our marriage is my favorite because it’s ours. 

Did you have any unexpected expectations in marriage? What did you do combat those feelings? I would love to hear your thoughts on this post, so comment below and we can chat!