Is it the Little or the Big Things that Ruin a Relationship?
She Said:
I lie awake in bed. Waiting. For the next inevitable snore to rumble through my non-slumber. Again.
There it is.
Now a minute goes by and there is nothing. Just when my body relaxes into the mattress, when lovely gorgeous luxurious sleep is imminent, another fog horn blast rockets through the bedroom. In this moment I hate him, I really hate him, and I can really understand how married couples turn to murder. Because, yes, I could murder him for this. This snoring that is destroying my sleep night after night after night after night.
Do people divorce over one, big, catastrophic event within a marriage? Cheating? Money? Sex, or lack thereof? Or is it all the little things? Do all those annoying quirks and habits that make up someone's personality add up over time until you just can't. Take. Another. Second? Say Serge cheated on me with another woman. What would have caused me more pain over the seven years of our marriage? The single incident of cheating or seven long years of not being able to sleep, of tossing and turning, of secretly wishing him dead? If you told me he'd stop snoring forever if he had sex with another woman I would be all for it. Yeah, sure, screw some hussy the one time and I'll probably get over it. But snore like a chainsaw for another seven years and, buddy, we're done. So yeah - maybe it is the little things.
Related: 5 lessons learned from 18 years of marriage
He Said:
I have no idea how love grows.
Sometimes I see little boxes in the local newspaper saying some couple has just celebrated 60 years together by gathering their 17 kids and their 623 grand-kids at The Olive Garden and they all had such a wonderful time and love is still alive and blah-blah-blah. It's great, don't get me wrong, but I don't understand it, really.
If it were me and my wife, my Monica, that probably wouldn't be some fun evening of Spaghetti Carbonara and Riunite and flashbulb pops and whatever. I mean, after all that time so many little things can change us, and do. After all those years of nit-picking and annoying each other with our stupid quirks, quirks that long ago made us chuckle and sigh: it's easy to imagine how time has sharpened the tips of the thousand sticking points we have with each other.
Truth be told, for me it's almost easier to imagine the grand-kids shoveling lasagne and meatballs down their hatches as Pop-Pop Serge takes a final bite of the poisoned tiramisu that Grandma Monica has put in front of him, not really to murder him so much as to just get him to stop with his constant throat-clearing once and for all.
Related: 7 ways to baby-proof your relationship
In love, it's the little things that make us or break us.
Always has been/always will be.
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Monica and Serge Bielanko have been married for eight years. Along the way they have practiced and perfected the dark arts of couch dining, clandestine boozing, bambino wrangling, wide-open domestic warfare, and modern love. Monica writes all over Babble.com and, in addition to Babble Voices, is featured on Strollerderby, FameCrawler, and Toddler Times. She also regularly updates her personal blog, The Girl Who. If he's not on Babble Voices, Serge can be found over on Dadding and is King of the Corner over at his own blog, Thunder Pie.
