Page 1 of Untangled
Prologue
This isn’t how I pictured it, being married.
Before you exchange vows, the folks in your life belong to one of three groups: friends, family, lover. When you take the person in the last category, whom you love most of all, and marry them? That whole category collapses. Two become one and three groups become two. Your lover turns family. Certainly, you don’tfeelabout them the way you feel about your sister or grandfather, but even so, they join the family bucket. With this comes all of the benefits—security, unconditional love—and all of the consequences. Namely, such close proximity that no one knows you better. You know them with equal closeness, including that they leave their socks directly next to the hamper instead ofinit. Their propensity to snore. The way they make the same joke whenever the opportunity arises.
What was once endearing becomes status quo.
And if distance makes the heart grow fonder, what about chronic exposure? What takes place in the heart then?
I promise, it’s not all bad. Daniel is thoughtful. He asks me how he can help and follows through. He never complains about taking out the trash. He picks up dinner on the way home from work when I send an SOS text or a selfie with Violet’s spit up in my hair. He’s a great guy. So much better than the husbands of some of my friends.
But the whole thing—lifelong commitment—involves so little romance. Much more practicality, if I’m honest. Marriage is coordinating pest control and texting grocery lists and dropping passive aggressive hints about the division of labor. It’s fighting over the right route to take to my parents’ house and scrolling our phones next to each other on the couch and calling it “spending time together.” It’s eggs stuck to the bottom of the sink that someone didn’t rinse down the drain.
Then you add in a baby, and the logistics multiply by ten. Your spouse is either a team member—the two of you passing like ships in the night, or rather, passing the baby—or an obstacle to your needs. The person you loved, that you still love, can feel more like a stranger than the lady that does your hair…if you had the time and the childcare to get your hair done these days.
And this continues until one day you wake up, eight years into marriage, feeling more like his roommate than his wife.
Ifeel more like his roommate than his wife.
It’s this thought, coupled with a healthy dose of fear for what this means for the future, that has me adding the Amorous Advent card deck to my online cart at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday in late November.
24 Days To Rekindle Your Spark.
That’s the tagline for a program with discussion questions and activities, one per day to complete with a partner.
We need something to get us out of this rut, because while he’s a good man, and we have a good life, it’s just so…uninspired.
Maybe we need just this.
Amorous Advent Daily Prompts
Author's Note: Read one chapter per day in the month of December, skip to the ones you want, or follow along with your own partner. If explicit sexual content isn’t your thing, put the book down now!
What brings you to the Amorous Advent challenge? Share your hopes for the next 24 days
Discuss when you first saw each other, andwhat you noticed
Hold hands while sharing what you’d like your life to look like ten years from now
Dance to your wedding song
