In a world saturated with social media and reality television, love has been defined with grandiose demonstrations and extravagant displays all laid out in an effort to be “goals”. It’s one carefully filtered picture after the next in an effort to prove to a following of strangers exactly how glamorous love is.
The only problem is that love isn’t glamorous at all. It’s messy and it’s frustrating and it’s a whole boat-load of work. It’s taking the “heel” slice of bread on your sandwich so your partner gets the last piece of good bread. It’s taking on your role as the driver or the gasper on every car ride. It’s learning the apparent superiority of skippy peanut butter to all other brands and vowing to never bring home anything else.
It’s a lot of different things for different people – but it certainly isn’t always glamorous or perfect.
As a mom, I think the greatest disservice I could do for our children is to lead them to believe that “prom-posals” and “Couple Goals” adequately describe 1% of what true, deep love is really like. I hope they don’t expect to see their Dad greet me at the door on anniversaries with poster boards scribbled with clever phrases. Mostly because he can’t spell for shit and it would be more like a game of mad gab than a romantic display.
I hope they don’t expect love to fit in perfectly posed and filtered little boxes. And I really hope they don’t base the greatness of their love on “likes”.
I hope they learn love when they see me crumble in to their Dad’s arms on particularly tough anniversaries and days. I hope they recognize the silent way that he knows exactly when I need to be held close and when I need space. I hope they understand that it took half a decade together for him to figure that out. I hope they hear him quietly and protectively tell people that “she likes to be left alone when she feels like that” and I hope they know he didn’t learn that from a handful of snap chats, but from being iced out time after time and continuing to remain as a steadfast supporter.
I hope they know that he proposed to me in our garage, on a Tuesday. I hope they know he prettied up tool chests with string lights and hid oil stains on the concrete with tea lights. I want them to understand that we were both shaking like leaves as he asked the most important question in no sort of clever or grand way, just genuinely. I hope they know that we had no idea what the future held in that moment and we didn’t need to.
I wish I could say with confidence that they would never see us fail, but they will – and honestly, they need to. I want our children to know that it’s not always easy, it’s not always instagram worthy, but it’s always worth it. I want them to see how frequently two utterly imperfect people fall down and get up again. I want them to know that 50 years of marriage does not come with out blood, sweat and tears. I want them to see that you don’t always get the profile picture version – sometimes you get Hell’s ugly step sister and you still gotta haul that with you to the grocery store on a Sunday.
The news feeds will always fill with something new, the followers will come and go and even pictures fade with time. But texting the love of your life the poop emoji and them automatically tossing a roll of toilet paper through the door like a grenade in the battlefield: now that’s #Goals. (Obviously just Husband goals for a relationship, but…love is sacrifice, ya’ll.)
Everyday Mama 