Marriage isn’t hard, but therapy is

I never understood the saying marriage is hard work until four years into my own marriage.

We were among the unfortunate (or fortunate depending how you look at it) engaged couples who had to cancel their wedding plans in 2020. We had a simple ceremony in the backyard of the home we were renting. There were four friends in attendance, one of whom officiated, and a photographer.

The ceremony lasted all of ten minutes.

Afterward, we ate pizza and chocolate cake topped with strawberries. When the light faded, we had a fire and passed around bottles of champagne while sharing memories and opinions. We wondered when the world would go back to normal and lamented the upcoming election only days away.

Our friends asked if we felt any different?

Nah, we said.

We were still the same Ben and Michelle we had been.

Nothing changed.

For the most part, life was easy. At the time I had crippling anxiety, but that was my normal. I fell back in love with reading, finding escapes within the pages of epic romantasy stories and psychological thrillers. My childhood dream of being a writer resurfaced. I was mulling the idea, but still too scared to start.

We lived in the same town as Ben’s family. He was an only child and grandchild on his mother’s side. His dad was on the cusp of 70 when we met in college at Clemson University. Two native Floridians who found each other in a different state. When we reached the stage of our relationship where it was starting to feel like forever, we talked about where to live. Ben liked North Carolina, but my sister had just had her first child, and I was longing to move closer to them.

In the end, we decided on Orlando. It was a few hours from my family, an area with good prospects, plenty of things to do, and within a 20-minute drive of Ben’s parents. We’d have support, and more importantly, Ben would be close to his aging father and grandmother. His dad was 47 when Ben was born.

We built a life. We bought a house. We were successful at our jobs. We had friends and a support network. We traveled to Ireland and Germany, Spain and Portugal, Maine and Tennessee. I still had anxiety, but I thought I was managing well. I was fine.

The first week of 2024, my father-in-law was diagnosed with bile duct cancer. There’s a more specific and scientific name that my mother-in-law knows by heart, but I’ll just stick with bile duct cancer.

From the moment we realized how serious the diagnosis was (he was 77 and his chances of recovery were minimal), I followed through on my promise to myself to start therapy. I put it off for years. I was anxious, but so what? Everyone was. I was fine.

In the first session, I told my therapist my goal for therapy was to be able to support my husband through his father’s cancer journey. She told me we could, and would, work on that, but we also needed to address my multiple anxiety disorders.

Multiple.

As in more than one. Spoiler alert: I had OCD.

I denied it. I had generalized anxiety, but then again, who doesn’t? It’s not a big deal; I’d lived with it for this long.

Turns out it was a very big deal, and I’d been repressing it for over 30 years.

While my husband processed his dad’s cancer, I processed my mental health diagnoses.

I went to therapy every Tuesday for a whole year. I got support for myself so I could support my husband. And for that year, marriage was hard. But not in the way I expected.

We cried together.

We talked about the future.

We grieved together.

We hugged each other tight and often.

When your partner is hurting and there’s nothing you can do to take their pain away; when you realize you can’t solve their heartache, and that there are no magical words that make everything better; seeing your partner suffer – that’s what’s hard about marriage.

But being married? That’s not hard. Because at the end of the day, we’re still just Ben and Michelle, but with a little more life behind us.