I love the song “You’re Still the One” by Shania Twain. It perfectly sums up the feelings I have about my marriage—because of our age difference (my husband was 34 and I was 19 when we got married) people thought we wouldn’t make it, and you know what, we did. We’re going on sixteen years at the end of the month, and we are even more in love now than we were at the time. He’s still the one I run to, the one that I belong to, and still the one I kiss good night, as the song says.
It hasn’t been easy. I don’t in any way mean to give that impression. Our age difference has come up from time to time—he’s had more formal education, he’s had more life experiences, and sometimes I’ve felt unprepared. We’ve had financial difficulty, stress over health problems, difficulty seeing eye to eye as we raise our children and discover different attitudes about discipline. But as we’ve encountered each of these obstacles, we’ve made a choice. We’ve chosen to turn to each other, instead of away from each other, to solve our problems. We’ve chosen to make sure that our spouse is still the one. It’s not a magical thing that happens and you’re lucky if it does—you create it by daily choices.
A line in the song says, “We beat the odds together. I’m glad we didn’t listen—look at what we would have been missin’.” There’s a whole lot of truth in that one little line—if you’re going to beat the odds (and let’s face it, every marriage today has odds stacked against it) it’s something that has to be done together. You can’t listen to the naysayers or you will miss out on all the good stuff that comes from perseverance.
Every day, I choose to still be the one, and make my husband still the one. Is this a choice you can make too?
Related Blogs:
Age Differences – Up Close and Personal
What You Shouldn’t Say to Your Husband
Are You Selfish or Selfless in Your Marriage?