Guest Blogger: Surviving the First Year of Marriage

Hey Y'all!  I am so excited to share some amazing guest bloggers with you (and also I'm excited to be on VACAY!) this week!  Enjoy the week, and give these super wonderful ladies some love!

First up is Kathy from Life As I Know It, who I can forgive for loving Harry Potter (so not my thing), if she can forgive me for not loving it!  Read about her tips on surviving the first year of marriage.  I loved her idea of sharing these tips (which are all totally applicable and valuable!), especially being a newlywed myself.  Enjoy!

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Hi everyone! This is Kathy from Life As I Know It. I blog about a bunch of random things including animals at the Zoo where I volunteer especially the penguins, my travels abroad (Antarctica, Argentina, Germany...), television, movies, and books especially Harry Potter, YouTube, mental health, my wonderful dog Stig, and my amazing husband Christian.

Christian and I have been married for almost a year and half and we have both grown up a lot as people and in our relationship in that first year.

So today, I am going to share with you my tips for surviving the first year of marriage.

• Keep dating. Once we're married, it becomes really easy to become complacent about the relationship. We see each other every evening and we eat dinner together every night. We see each other and talk to each other everyday, so it becomes difficult to remember to take each other out on dates. But romance never gets old. Even if there isn't time or money for a date, romance can still be a part of the relationship through little gifts, sweet notes, or great big hug. Romance makes us feel special and reminds us what made us fall in love with each other in the first place.
• Don't expect life to be perfect.  We all grow up hearing love stories that end "happily ever after". It doesn't work that way in the real world. There is no point in a relationship where every thing is happy and easy forever after. We still argue. We probably always will. Arguments aren't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, if we argue constructively it can improve the relationship.
• Be a family. Getting married makes us a family which is wonderful. But it's also important to remember that marriage also makes us new members of each other's families. Getting to know the in-laws is really important. Every family is different and they have different holiday traditions and different ways of interacting with one another. Realizing that these things are different and not necessarily bad is the first step. Then there's the journey of working out how we fit into our new families and their traditions.
• Make adjustments. Everyone has different expectations and ideas about what being a family means. We have to be open to talking to each other about how the relationship is working. And we have to be comfortable talking about things like our finances and what to do with our bills and how much money to save. And then reaching some compromise that we can both live with. These aren't fun discussions but it is really important to us that we're on the same page.
• Have fun. The last and probably most important tip. Just because we're married does not mean we have to act like "adults" all of the time. We still love video games, and sleeping in late on the weekends, and generally being silly together. It is so important for us not to always get bogged down by the bills we have to pay and chores that need to be done, and just relax and have fun together. Christian is still the one and only person who can make me laugh no matter what's going on in my life.

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Thanks for having me, Casey!