How To Have A Happy Marriage
Surprise, I can’t actually tell you how to have a happy marriage. I can only tell you what has made me happier in my marriage. I made a small choice several years ago that had big impact on my all-around joy levels even outside of marriage. But it’s not a cure-all, even for me. Take what feels useful, pass by the rest.
When I got married five years ago, I’m not sure what I expected of Trevor. I expected myself to be great at cooking, cleaning, organizing, decorating, having an orgasm, talking about deep emotions, and working a job.
When it turned out that most of those things felt like trying to drive with only the use of my big toes, I assumed, not that I was young and in need of practice, but that I was bad. I spent the majority of our first year of marriage looking around at other wives and other couples, locked in a frustrating cycle of insecurity and depression, all compounded by my inability to name those feelings.
All my life before marriage I'd had my own room, or at the very least my own bed. I could afford to go with the flow, not rock the boat, and keep any unruly feelings to myself, because at the end of the day I’d be alone. All day I could take in, and take in, and take in the thoughts and ideas of others, without letting anything controversial slip out, because at night I could release. At night there was no possibility of misunderstanding, no hurt feelings to prevent, no eyes gauging my reactions.
AND THEN I GOT MARRIED. One afternoon about a month in, I was staring across the room at Trevor sitting behind his laptop screen and I thought, “Wow. He’s like, always here.” I thought maybe this was a normal feeling to have until I asked my friend Darragh about it. She’d been married ten days after me and we compared notes often. But when I asked her if she ever felt weird about the permanence of the situation, she responded, “No, if anything I get anxious about how little time there is! We’re all going to be old and gray soon!” Oh, so I’m broken and alone after all. Awesome possum.
Before our very first snowboarding trip. You know, when we both thought somehow I’d manage to like it.
In those days every fight was painfully drawn out because I needed a ten minute pause just to put my next sentence together. I didn’t know how to be mad with someone there watching me. I couldn’t seem to say, “Please don’t leave your dirty socks by the bed,” as soon as I noticed them. Instead I let the words simmer for three weeks until they exploded as a totally different sentence like, “YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING AROUND HERE!”
I came to the conclusion that I was a flawed adult. Bad at working, bad at keeping house, bad at money, bad at tense conversations, bad at sex. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
I hadn’t voiced any of these feelings to anyone, again because of the no talkee no feeley issue. I know now what I'd just begun sensing then: that difficult feelings demand respect and acknowledgement. When they don’t get it voluntarily, they’ll make bigger and bigger messes until you’re forced to pay attention.
For me, they used a silverfish. A silverfish, if you don’t know, is neither silver nor fish. It’s a flat, dull gray bug with long antenna and short stubby legs. Our apartment was crawling with them.
I no longer believe that I am bad in general, but hear this: I’m bad at bugs. I was then, and I am now. I hate them. I hate seeing them. I hate hearing them. I hate killing them. I even have nightmares about them. Behold, a text I sent to Trevor last fall.
One evening when we were home together I’d decided to make brownies. I pulled my favorite dish out of the cabinet, and as I lifted it toward the stove I saw the silverfish in the bottom. I jumped and stifled a scream.
“You okay?” Trevor called from the tiny bathroom.
I clunked the dish down on the stove and clutched my hands to my chest. “Fine. I just found another bug.” I stared down at it, clenching my jaw.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
Trevor is so infuriatingly sweet about the bug thing. He never makes fun of me unless I’m making fun of myself. He never asked to be Chief Bug Killer in this household, but he never complains. It’s wonderful, really.
But in that moment, I hated his sweetness. I hated needing him. I hated that such a tiny, squishable creature could make me feel so small and weak and helpless. So I decided to take care of it myself.
Breathing deeply, I carefully lifted the dish from the stove and walked toward the back door, my dish arm fully extended, only trembling a little. I slid the door open with my free hand. I’d just flick the little demon into the snow. Easy peasy.
We haven’t talked much about childhood hobbies yet, so I know this may surprise you, but I’m not what you’d call athletic. Apparently when I’m under duress, (the presence of a silverfish DOES COUNT as duress, DEREK!) even basic coordination is too much for me, because I missed the bug by a mile and flicked nothing but air.
The silverfish, now aware of impending attack and just as frightened as I was, began to scuttle. Now listen. Scuttling is one of the most offensive things about bugs. “Scuttle” is a dirtier word than I even prefer to type, but there are no others appropriate for the action, so bear with me. This will all be over soon. He scuttled in circles for a moment, and then directly toward my hand, still grasping the dish.
I screeched “No!” and chucked the dish away from me. It fell in slow motion. As the glass connected with the concrete slab and shattered in a thousand directions, my knees connected with the shag carpet, and something in me shattered too.
As tiny shards pierced my skin, rage and hopelessness bled out of me in silent, heaving sobs. Trevor was there, a hand on my back, my face, my head, concerned that I was seriously injured. I had to be, right? Otherwise this reaction was totally insane.
I ran to the bathroom, leaving him with the mess. I sat-fell down on the cold toilet lid and flipped the lock with shaking fingers. The ugly sobs kept coming—the ones that twist your face into frightening configurations. The unsettling kind of crying that you want to look away from when you see it in the movies—the kind that wins Oscars.
It felt like a long time before the scrape, scrape, scrape of Trevor’s clean up quieted down and his knock landed softly against the door. I opened it and he sat in the frame, our knees almost touching.
He started by asking some gentler version of “What was that?” and ended with, “We can buy a new dish, babe!” I don’t remember exactly what I told him in the middle, except that it was the truth.
The truth of how that dish with our name on the bottom of it made me feel like a grown woman who could handle her life;
that I hated both my jobs, and hated myself for hating them;
that I felt trapped in our apartment and I didn’t know how to live with another person forever;
that I felt paralyzed to clean or decorate, which was so stupid because the place was so small;
how sick to death I was of bugs, and weird smells, and cold, and change;
how much pressure I felt to be good and smart and capable;
how tired I was.
So, so tired.
More tears fell as I spoke. Trevor scooted closer until his thumbs were rubbing small circles on my knees. It was a nice gesture, but the glass shards really put a kink in the comfort factor, so I asked him to stop.
At the end of that night my favorite dish was gone, and so was my favorite “always okay” veneer. It was the beginning of the lesson that God did not make me wrong. It was not the last time I would believe that He had, but it was the first time I noticed that nothing caved in when I admitted weakness.
That reminder came back to me several months later as I stared at Trevor across the packed living room at my brother’s wake. Everyone there was telling different stories that no one else seemed to have heard before, because Jeff couldn’t tell people what was inside him. In his early life, just like for me, it was easier not to. So he never practiced.
And then, when it mattered—when faith shifted, marriage broke, and depression crushed in all around, he was missing the vital skill of telling the truth about himself. I stood in that room with so many who loved the piece of himself he’d entrusted to them, and an urgency bubbled within me. A fierce desire that the mourners at my funeral would all tell the same stories because they all knew the same Steph.
And after the urgency, fear. Because I knew that would only happen if I started now. I had to learn to tell the truth about myself, to find a way to share the inner world that laziness and fear had kept hidden. That’s when my eyes found Trevor in the crowd. I’d start with him.
I get that’s kind of an intense genesis, and it probably sounds like I was hiding something super dark and sinister like a side hustle as a career assassin or something. Actually I just didn’t know how to say simple, normal things like, “I actually hate that song,” or “Yeah, I don’t want that guy to be President,” or “I don’t love it when you do that thing in bed,” or “I need a full day at home with nothing to do.” Or, you know, PICK UP YOUR DANG SOCKS.
But I knew that if I practiced saying what I actually thought with small, low-risk things like socks, then it’d be easier to tell the truth about bigger, more important things like faith and mental health.
I am not a marriage counselor. I know your situation and personality and needs are all different than mine. But nothing has done more to improve my happiness in marriage than this:
Tell the truth — as soon as you know it, and always with grace. Even about the small stuff. If nothing else, it’ll save you two weeks of picking glass out of your shag carpet.
