It wasn't long before I started seeing posts criticizing the Love Your Spouse challenge. At first I thought, "Touche....marriage isn't easy or perfect every day, they're right". Then I thought, "Does the fact that marriage isn't easy mean we can't post about loving our spouse?"
So....I had some thoughts and I wrote them down and it became this lengthy blog :)
On the Love Your Spouse Challenge and Why I Disagree With the Posts Telling People to "Get Real Because Marriage is Hard"
Marriage is not perfect. This is true in essence, but it depends on how you define perfect.
What makes my marriage perfect to me is cliche but true - we are both imperfect people. We do have to work on it and choose each other every day. We disagree often, we offend each other and do things that drive each other crazy even after we promise to "not do it again" and then sometimes we do it again and we cycle back into the same old arguments.
We had to learn how to fight. We are still learning. We will continue to have to learn throughout the rest of our lives because people change, stuff happens and life is unpredictable. No one is perfect but that's what I signed up for when I decided to get married. I wanted someone to go through life with and that includes going through the hard stuff and not liking each other sometimes. Every day "for the rest of our lives" is a long time if we are lucky enough to live long lives and grow old together. I myself am not perfect, I make mistakes and will always have a lot to learn. I want to be forgiven for my mistakes. I want understanding when I'm being a jerk and say or do things I don't mean. I wanted to marry someone who would give me grace and forgiveness for those things and I want to give those to them in return.
But there is a reason I married my husband. I fell madly in love. I continue to fall in love with this guy over and over, especially after we have pulled through something difficult together. Of course the good days where I adore and appreciate and fall in love all over again will out number the bad ones. Something that helps keep those good days alive is communicating and showing your spouse that you love them. I found all of these things in my spouse and in our marriage, so to me it is perfect.
Some people post about sports, politics, their small businesses - some post a combination of all these things. I post mainly to celebrate joy, happiness and positive things. Not because I want to brag or because I want people to think I/my life is perfect. Sometimes I post about being frustrated or sad or about a bad thing that happened - it's because it's a place where people want to connect with others and that's how I do it. I think that's why people chose to participate in this challenge; they just wanted to share the happy too.
On shaming people for using filters because "that's not real life"
This subject also made me think of the way people like to criticize others for using filters on apps like Instagram.
I use it because it makes me happy to use a filter that makes my picture look pretty. That's why I want to post it whether it's a picture of me or my food or of nature or my friends. The filters add a little creative, artistic flare and that makes me happy.
I don't see anything wrong with wanting to put out your best moments, the happy things or a filtered photo that makes you feel good. It's just for fun, why take it so seriously? I feel this way about all critics on all of the social media platforms. I guess it's just true that no matter what, haters gonna hate ya'll.
No one personally criticized me or my posts, but after having seen the counter-articles and other posts about the challenge being stupid or unrealistic, I just felt compelled to respond.
And that's just like, my opinion man
