42. What does it mean to be a wife? Guest Blogger
Ok, CJ and I have been emailing back and forth all day, and I have never met someone so in synch with me. I knowyou will find her fascinatng too.
Kristina Brooke and I decided to do a guest post on one another’s blogs to stir things up a bit! I have to give her full credit for the idea to do so as well as the topic she has chosen!
My name is CJ and I’m going to tell you what it means to be a wife.
I always wanted to be a working mother and wife. I wanted to have it all. I would juggle the kids with my husband and see him when we weren’t both working or handling the kids. We would be partners in passing, much as my parents had been my entire life. Then at the age of eighteen, I found myself an expectant mother without that partner/husband in the foreseeable future. I worked two jobs, I went to school full time and I spent as much time with my child as I could. But it wasn’t enough.
When my son was five, I started dating my husband, whom I had known for ten years. We started talking about life and our visions for it. We were both relatively open to whatever the future would bring, but we agreed on the important aspects, we wanted to be together, we wanted to raise our family together and we wanted our children to have everything they could possibly have. So we set to work.
For two years, we worked together. We worked apart. We balanced my son between us (with help from his biological father and my parents) and we made it work. We built a future for our family. When we decided to expand that family, my goals changed. I wanted to be home with them. I wanted to be available for field trips and homework. I wanted to be the one to get my baby up and put him/her to bed and spend the entire day teaching, loving and playing. I wanted to give my child what I had never had, a full time parent.
Thankfully, my husband shared my view. He was more than willing to make the sacrifice of working long hours in order to make sure I could be home with our children. I transitioned into working at home and then, eventually became a stay at home mother. Through this transition, I changed my view not only as a mother, but also as a wife.
I no longer wanted my husband to be a fly by night partner that helped me juggle my children and our schedules. I no longer wanted our partnership to be working out who got the kids and who handled what. I wanted my marriage to be based on the one thing we had shared all along, our friendship.
I strive to be someone my husband can be proud to call his wife. I clean our home not because he expects it, but because it allows our time together to be time we spend with the kids, doing fun stuff. I respect his position in our family because he’s earned that respect by always acting in the best interest of our children and our family. I have learned to compromise when I don’t want to and demand something when I truly need it. I’ve learned that nothing is written in stone when your common visions and goals change together.
I’ve learned communication is the key to keeping your marriage working. I’ve learned that having a friend in your corner is more important than having someone you work parallel from. I’ve learned that late hours are the price I pay for knowing my kids will have what they need, including having their mother at home. I’ve learned that it’s not necessarily the quantity of time my husband is with us, but what we do with that time when we get it. I’ve learned that building on the “like” I have for my husband is just as important as working on the “love” we share.
To me, being a wife is about being a friend. A lover. A source of support. An advocate. A confidante.
We may not have it all together, but together, we certainly have it all.
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CJ has been married to her husband for almost four years, but has enjoyed their friendship for almost fifteen. Together they are raising three children, two of which are adopted with special needs.
How big of a dork am I? I’m leaving a comment on my own post!!