The Best Relationship Lessons I've Learned From 17 Years of Marriage

This week I celebrated my 17th wedding anniversary. For context, my wife and I were barely older than babies (not literally) when we married in 2006. At the time, I was 22, and she was 20. We were very young, naive, and unrealistic in our expectations of what it meant to be married.

I AM JAMES GÓMEZ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Along with being so young, I was also in the Navy then, and my wife was still a Junior in college. To make matters worse, right after getting married (6-weeks after getting married, to be exact), I found out I’d be deploying again. So I was gone for approximately 11 months of our first year of marriage. Transparently, there were more than a few times I expected to pull into port and go home to an empty house. Things were very hard early on.

We were immature personally, financially, emotionally, and in every other way you can imagine. Neither of us takes for granted how hard those early years were or how fortunate we are to celebrate our 17th year of marriage.

It’s a miracle that our marriage is healthier than ever. We haven’t totally screwed up in parenting our four kids (at least not yet) and we’re in the most stable environment we’ve ever been in. Going from where we started to where we are came with plenty of bumps and bruises, unexpected twists, and pleasant surprises.

Neither my wife nor I believe we’ve “arrived” or have everything together. There’s still plenty of mess we are working through regularly. Reflecting on the last 17 years, here are the five biggest relationship lessons I’ve learned in developing a healthy marriage:

Marriage Isn’t About Making One Big Choice But Thousands of Little Choices

One area I was most naive about early in marriage was that getting married would solve most, if not all, of my problems. I see this mentality regularly with peers and folks I used to pastor. I’ve started calling this view of marriage the “fallacy of the fairy tale ending.”

Essentially, this view believes whatever personal issues my partner or I have will miraculously go away or resolve themselves once we’re married. For example, say one person struggles with personal finances, but their partner doesn’t. What often happens is the struggling partner will convince themselves once they’re married, their partner will handle the money, and all their financial woes will be gone.

This mentality only adds unfair expectations on your partner and, more often than not, leads to significant strife and tension. I’ve learned that healthy relationships require honest and transparent conversations, getting on the same page, and walking with each other to make daily choices that benefit the relationship more than the individual.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean there’s never space to do some of the things you want. It means that those things you want for yourself must be clearly communicated and agreed upon before you do it.

For myself, I LOVE reading. I could easily spend all my money on books if I didn't have healthy boundaries. My wife knows how much I love books, so we’ve agreed on a monthly budget that allows me to get a few books, and we’ve created a regular space where I can get away to read without interruption. My wife is making small choices to help me get a personal fill and keep my sanity while doing something I love while I’m keeping in check my desire to blow our money on books, thus serving my family.

The cliche “a healthy marriage takes hard work” is a cliche because it’s true. I’ve learned the majority of the hard work comes from making small decisions regularly that puts the good of the relationship before myself.

Emphasize Win-Win Scenarios Over A Zero-Sum Game

Oh boy, this one was a hard one for me. I’m naturally a competitive person, I’m witty, and I was a bit on the spoiled side as a kid. My wife is a natural go-getter, more cautious with her speech, and intentional with her decisions. Left unchecked, these personality differences can make me snarky (read, I can become an asshole), impatient, and use my words to get my way.

Mind you, I’ve grown in this area over the years, but it has taken a lot of therapy, internal processing, and candidly just growing up on my end. I used to think if I went with a plan my wife made or if she said no to an idea I had, somehow that meant I “lost” and she “won.” Transparently, I don’t know what losing or winning in these situations means, but I still felt that way.

Instead of trying to find ways to compromise so we both felt valued, heard, and cared for, every decision was a battle in my mind to determine a winner and a loser.

It has taken every second of my 17 years of marriage, and a ton of patience from my wife, but I’ve learned more important than feeling like I’ve “won” anything is making sure my wife and I are present and building trust with one another. For what it’s worth, I learned that my desire to feel like I was “winning” or getting my way was rooted in my deep relational trust issues.

My desire to get my way is an unhealthy survival instinct. Because I often feel like I’m the only one looking out for myself, and resources are limited, I need to get as much as possible. This simply isn’t true.

As I slowed down to process and see that my wife genuinely loves me, has my best interest at heart, and is doing the best she can for our family, the same as me, the easier it became to trust her. As trust grew, so did our desire to find win-win solutions.

Don’t Avoid Disagreement and Arguing, Do it in A Healthy Way.

Both my wife and I grew up in unhealthy home environments. My wife’s story is hers to tell, so I’ll focus on myself. My parents divorced when I was two, and every friend I had growing up was also raised by a single mom. All this to say, I grew up having never seen what a healthy marriage looks like.

To make matters worse, my older brother struggled with addiction most of his life, so many memories I have of him, my mom, and I are primarily around fighting. Like throwing dishes, screaming all kinds of craziness, I better hide under the dining room table for my safety kind of fighting.

Because of the unhealthy environments my wife and I grew up in, we didn’t know there was such a thing as healthy disagreement. When we argued, it always turned personal and became an attack on each other where we were most vulnerable. In time, we thought the only way to avoid attacking each other was to stop disagreeing and never argue.

It was this weird belief that healthy marriages mean you pretend you’re always on Xanax. Just be calm, never get angry or upset, and keep things light so everything will be alright.

The truth is it wasn’t until the last 3-4 years that we learned how to disagree healthily. Most of what we learned was from watching healthier couples than us disagree publicly but do so in a loving way. Disagreeing and arguing healthily focuses on the point of tension without making things personal. It also looks like giving one another space to share what the other thinks and feels.

When your partner’s feelings or thoughts can’t be expressed, those thoughts and feelings become like a ticking bomb over time. The more we stuff, the bigger the explosion will be down the line. Giving the space to focus on the issue, allowing room to express what each other is thinking and feeling, and not making things personal prevents an emotional bomb from being assembled.

You and Your Spouse are Going to Change Multiple Times

I’m totally stealing this from my Priest (Priestess?🤔), Reverand Reagan Gonzales, but it's SO freaking true. She said, “Even if you only get married once over your lifetime, you and your spouse will change numerous times.” 🤯

If I had to guess, I’m probably on James 3.0 at this point in my marriage. James 1.0 was a young twenties, arrogant, self-centered human being. James 2.0 was a workaholic with a chip on his shoulder and convinced what he thought and believed was the way everyone should think and feel. This current version of James has been humbled by severe anxiety, depression, PTSD, and so much of what he believed was the way was a way at best or not a way at all at worst. Assuming I have another 40-50 years, I will change at least two more times. Who am I kidding? It’ll likely be more than that…

As much as I’m not the same person my wife married, she’s also not the same person. Going back to my first point, neither of our goals is to keep the other from growing and evolving as people.

If anything, our desire is to make the small decisions to give one another the space to process, question, grow, and thrive as the people we are becoming.

Kids are Amazing, and Life Will Be Different

One thing I’m not too fond of hearing is when couples blame having kids for the marriage falling apart. Kids don’t ruin marriages.

The greatest joy in my life is my wife and four kids. Specifically, my kids have helped me tap into parts of myself that I thought were long lost and gone. They have taught me how to be patient, how much presence matters, and how good it is to put others before yourself.

Don’t get me wrong; they can be a pain in the ass; they talk back, scream all the freaking time, and are always eating! And if they’re not eating, they complain because they’re hungry. Literally, 3-hours without a meal or snack isn’t going to kill anyone.

A worry I had in first becoming a dad was, “Will I be able to love my wife the way I have and love this child the way I hope?” Of course, with every new child, you go through the entire anxiety-inducing cycle all over again. Can I love these two, and now this one? What about this one? Oh wait, there’s one more…what about them?

Realistically, marriage relationships change once kids are introduced to the equation. However, change isn’t harmful or wrong. If anything, change is good and necessary to ensure each family member is considered, loved, cared for, and supported by the whole.

I remember a friend telling me this when we were getting ready to have our first child, and as cheesy as it is, I’ve found it to be true. She said,

“When you start to have kids your heart doesn’t become divided in its love for your spouse and child. What happens is your heart grows so you’re able to fully love your spouse and children in new and deeper ways than you thought possible.”

I’m not arrogant or naive enough to end with something like, “Apply these five lessons, and you’ll have the best marriage ever!” All I can do is share what I’ve learned in my journey and hope some of these lessons serve to help you have a smoother but just as joyful and filling marriage.

I AM JAMES GÓMEZ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.