I have been married just over a year, and I am blown away each day by the incredible husband that God gave me. At the same time, though, I am also overwhelmed by how hard life really can be and how much work it takes to make a relationship great and to live a joyful, fulfilled life.

Life is pretty uncertain and requires so much faith, and if you’re anything like me then you may not fully know what direction your life is taking yet, but one thing I do know within all of the changing pieces is that I want to be a dang good wife and I know God wants that for me too.

If he allowed marriage into my life and yours, or has that in the cards for someday, then he has great plans for the love we show to our husbands and the love that comes out of our marriage into the world.

Relationships are just plain hard, though, especially when you have to figure out how to live with the same person day in and day out. My husband is my best friend and we’ve never had a strenuous relationship or rarely even fight, but we still struggle, often because we are more passive and sensitive people that don’t confront immediately.

I don’t know why God didn’t just program us to understand and respond to other people well (because that would make life SO DANG much easier!!), but honestly, I think it’s because it causes us to learn about his love and care for us even when we mess up, how to lean on him when we need help, and how it’s okay to not have life figured out because HE DOES!!

Since getting married, I have become way more aware of the way I think and react to things that other people do, especially my husband, and to be honest it’s not always so pretty. There’s so many aspects to marriage, and when two people have different personalities (different enneagram numbers, anyone?) it can be so tough to figure out the individual needs and how to meet them.

Enter in my biggest struggle so far…

Expectations.

I am the queen of believing a situation or person (i.e. my husband) should act a certain way and then being disappointed and pouting when it doesn’t happen that way. Immature, I know!

Expectations are NOT real. They are one-sided perceptions of an outcome—what I want to happen or think is going to happen.

My husband doesn’t know what I want, he doesn’t think like I do, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do in certain situations, and that in no way gives me the right to be upset when he doesn’t act how I see fit.

It can be as simple as he got us pizza and it ‘s not what I wanted, or I was expecting a real conversation at dinner and he is distracted or not responding much. Or it can be things like he not giving much empathy when I tell him a struggle, or not thanking me or noticing when I clean the house. There are bigger issues, obviously, but truthfully I think it’s the smaller everyday situations that really build up over the months and years and then turn into the husband or wife resenting those things that they had expectations for that were never met.

If you think about it, every little thing that your husband does that ticks you off lingers with you, so that’s what I realized in myself and I wanted to nip in the butt, so to speak. I’m going to use a really personal example here because I want to share something real and relevant and maybe even something that you or other wives might be able to relate to.

My husband desires physical touch a lot more than I do and has a higher sex drive as well. I wish I did, but I just don’t, and it’s honestly become an insecurity and struggle because I feel so lacking in that area. I love connecting with my husband, but being physically intimate every single day is just a little much for me. Some days I just want to kiss and cuddle and be close to him without the expectation for more. For a while, though, when he kissed me it usually only meant one thing—sex. I struggled with it because while I want that kind of intimacy to be really great between us, I don’t want it to be the only way we can connect physically, especially when it’s not always an easy thing for me. Like, what happened to those hot makeout sessions in high school?!

Anyway, I was getting annoyed and honestly started to hate every time we started kissing. Maybe that seems a little harsh or petty, but it was real for me and important = I needed to say something!

Guess what? One day I bucked up and just simply told my husband what I needed, and he didn’t get angry or annoyed or anything. He said okay, I will remember that. Simple, done. You have no idea how nervous I was to say something or how long I let it bother and eat at me. I wasted my own time!

In that moment, I also realized that I was taking my husband and his form of loving me for granted.

While that’s not always easy for me, I want to be grateful that he cares about me and seeks out time to connect and love on me. I want to be grateful that he is pursuing me and he cares enough to keep trying even when I am not always in the mood or when I am just difficult (LOL).

And another huge thing, I need to be incredibly grateful that he was so willing and understanding when I shared my needs and thoughts with him! That is huge, and if I overlooked that and just expected him to “get it” and understand how I was feeling—then I was in the wrong.

It is a huge blessing to have a husband who is thoughtful about our needs and really listens when we say things that need to be resolved or will help us out. Let me repeat again, for myself especially—that is HUGE, and I am truly grateful for his graciousness and also patience with me.

So, long story short, and a lesson I am working on learning is that instead of having expectations and getting disappointed when they are not met or understood, I need to instead communicate my needs and practice gratitude for what my husband is already doing positively and lovingly, and also for how kindly he responds to that communication.

I understand that it will not be so easy for everyone, and if your husband is not as patient or understanding, I challenge you to talk to him about your needs anyway (from the smallest ones to the biggest). I want to challenge us as wives to start as the gracious ones. To assume the best, communicate well (instead of pouting or punishing, in my case), and love as dang much as we can.

If you’ve ever read The 5 Love Languages then you understand the concept of showing love first even if it is not returned right away. I see our needs and expectations in the same way. Let’s be super communicative and understanding about our’s and our husband’s needs and set a precedent of safe and loving conversation around the expectations that we have, and work on talking about them before reacting negatively.

I am honestly not the greatest at that, but I am working on it because I know practice makes perfect, and also that every time I do speak up and give my marriage a chance, I am making an intentional investment into making it better—an investment that will pay off in years down the road and make our marriage a rich place to be.