Security

"relationships tend to challenge our security rather than reinforce it"

The quote was taken from my longtime friend's blog and it really made me think. I've always considered myself a confident, secure person, but since Ive gotten married, I've felt much less confident in general. This doesn't make any sense to me, since I've never been under the impression that a relationship will complete me or make me more secure. If anything, I was under the impression that I would be "fine": I'd always heard that if you get married and your self-confidence is low, you'll only feel worse, but if your self-confidence is high, then you will have a healthy relationship. I never heard anything about relationships challenging our security, but I think Joseph has hit the issue straight on. For me, life with another person is wonderful, first off, but it is also a bit confusing. Making decisions on my own was a fairly easy task, mostly since I was the only one to be accountable for those decisions. Married, each decision before God isn't only a matter of what God wants me to do, it's what God wants US to do...and that is a lot more complicated. Same with human relationships, time management, planning, money, etc. It is difficult for me to describe. I'm not saying that it is bad, just that it has surprised me and I'm still working out how to incorporate my self-confidence into our relationship-confidence (does that even make any sense?). It's surprised me in the same way that I was surprised after having a baby: everything was just as I expected except that there was all of a sudden three times the amount of laundry. I'd read all the baby books, been around babies and talked to other Moms - why hadn't this topic come up? Why wasn't I prepared for this? Life as an adult has also surprised me. I grew up in a healthy home, emotionally, spiritually, financially, educationally, etc. I've always considered my parents to be great parents that taught me well: I could budget, clean a house, do basic cooking, but the culmination of adding all those and the rest of life in full force and at the same time has caught me off guard as well. Five years, three houses and two children into this marriage, I'm still trying to get "caught up" with my feet under me. Why did I expect this all to be so easy??