Our Story: Part 3 - Growing Pains: Marriage, Miscommunication, and the Breaking Point.

When you think about marriage, you don’t always think about the work it requires. Disney never prepared us for how to properly fight (cause there will always be fights). It never taught us how to love through hardship or what to do when you realize you don’t always like the person you married. Disney taught us that you fall in love, get married, and a true love’s kiss will overcome any battle. It’s supposed to be easy! Right?!

Unfortunately for us, Disney was pretty much the only example of love we had in our lives. Both Juan and I came from very different yet both very toxic homes. The traits we learned growing up didn’t mesh well together, and we quickly learned that this marriage thing was hard work.

We were a family of 5 by the time we were both 23 years old. As we were just barely adults ourselves, we struggled to understand how to balance marriage, careers, and parenting. We were financially struggling, we were emotionally struggling, and we were hanging on by a thread for so long.

From the outside, though, we were picture perfect. We learned very quickly that if we just smiled, laughed a lot, and presented ourselves as put together, no one questioned how things really were. No one asked us the hard questions about how our marriage was really going. If we were adapting and growing together. There were no hard questions asked, but they were also never addressed at home.

Juan grew up in a house of silence. No one fought because everything was ignored. Issues were not addressed, and they remained silent. So when he got married, he knew he didn’t want to continue that trend. He wanted us to talk about issues, to bring them forward, and not hide them away.

I grew up in a very different house. Whoever yelled loudest got the floor. Everything was fought about. Everything was made into an issue. So I went into my marriage determined to be the peacemaker! I would be the wife who let everything go. Never sharing what I felt, I just pushed it down and pretended everything was okay.

Now, let me tell you, if you think this is the perfect combination for a lifelong happy marriage, you're very wrong!

The more Juan wanted to address things, the more I pulled inside myself. The more I ignored what was going on, the angrier he became that things were being swept under the rug. It was the perfect recipe for disaster. Because, randomly, I would explode on him. Throw out months worth of pain I was holding, blame him for all my depression, anger, and brokenness, that I felt like I carried all the time. Our marriage was explosive and unhealthy. But we didn’t know what to do. We thought this was just what life was supposed to be like. We refused to admit that we both feared we had made a mistake by getting married in the first place.

Looking back on our early marriage, I feel a great deal of sympathy for this young couple. They were often fighting for the same thing: the desire to be loved and wanted. But neither of them had the examples or skills to properly discuss their needs. For so long, they lived in sadness. They believed that was the best there was. My heart breaks for the loneliness they carried.

So what turned it around?

Complete and total destruction.

We burned our house down… and slowly and painfully rebuilt it.

In 2011, a lot was going on in our lives. We moved several states away, trying to escape our problems. Trying to just start new and ignore all the baggage we carried. However, guess what, moving doesn’t solve anything when it comes to communication. We were fighting more than ever. So many years of pain, resentment, and anger continued building and building. So one day…I snapped.

I told Juan I was done. I wanted out of our marriage instantly; my heart had become cold and black. The walls I had slowly built over the past 10 years finally sealed, and the love I had always had for him was no longer suffocating in darkness.

I had a full emotional breakdown. I shut out everyone. Including our kids. I isolated myself, slowly starving myself, understanding that I just didn’t deserve to live anymore. I was on a path of total destruction, and I slowly dragged Juan along with me.

I can’t go into all that occurred over those painful months. I hurt Juan in ways that I’m still ashamed of. I did everything possible to push him away. To give him the out that I truly thought he wanted. See, I never got past those first months of our marriage. Never saw that he PICKED me. Only seeing that he made me his wife out of obligation, not out of love or desire. So when I walked away, I expected him to take off running.

Thankfully, he was stronger than I ever imagined.

Juan fought. He fought not just for our marriage or for our family. He fought for me! The harder I pushed him away, the more he crawled his way back.

Our marriage should not have survived. We were doomed almost from the beginning. But because of God’s beautiful grace and love, He brought us back together. It was painful, it sometimes felt impossible, but with God’s help, we rebuilt the house I destroyed.

Check out Part 3- The Turning Point: The Day We Chose to Stay.