Of being a wife.

Have you ever become a wife and realised that while nothing really changes, everything changed. It was so strange, we woke up, my husband made me a coffee in bed like he always has and always does. But it was different.

Before I was married, I wore jewellery but I never felt weird without it. When we got engaged, I wore my engagement ring constantly and now that I am married, if I am without my wedding band I feel weird. My husband is the same.

He takes his off for work as he works with his hands in a high risk job, I take mine off to wash my hair because girl, I know you know, but otherwise I feel physically uncomfortable without it.

We went out one day about two months after the wedding and my husband realised about five minutes away from the house that he forgot his wedding band and dead ass turned around and made us late for the first time IN HIS LIFE, this man decided to be late because he forgot his ring.

Something he said to me a week after we got married and he was about to fly out to work was he had never been so sad to leave me before. I asked why and he said, “because I’m not just leaving my girlfriend or my fiancée, I’m leaving my wife in a country I won’t be in for six weeks.”

So I have a question, does becoming a husband change a man’s mentality around his other half?

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Do you know what no one told me about becoming a wife..

No one told me how hard it is going from being a strong independent woman who literally bought a house, her dream car and built the career of her dreams, completely on her own…

To become a wife who combines and sacrifices everything I worked for, for the good of my marriage and family.

No one ever told me how hard it would be to let go of the struggle and the work I put in to support myself. No one told me how hard it would be to be a part of a team and to never have to be alone.

No one ever told me how much I would grieve my maiden name as I watched my passport, drivers license, cards and documentation holding my name disappear into nothing.

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Okay – I have decided I am going to get properly real here.

My husband was born to be a husband and a father. From the word go, from the moment he decided that’s what this relationship was going to be, he has been everything you would want your daughter to marry.

He supports every word, every thought process, every emotion, every dream. Nothing is his anymore, everything is ours. To my husband, his life does not belong to him, it belongs to us.

And do you know how confronting it is to sit here and be scared of losing everything that was mine..? I put this down to the patriarchy and how fucking hard women have had to fight to be treated like human beings, but to let go of all of that self sufficiency and independence and be permanently tied, to a MAN. I will never be able to describe how difficult it has been to do.

But guess what – my husband has held my hand the entire way. He was okay with me not changing my name. He was okay with me keeping my house as my own tied up in a binding financial agreement even though he did not want to do the same with his house. Through all of my emotional battles and confrontations with myself, my fight for self preservation and to stay in ‘me vs you’.. my husband has given me everything. Because my husband knows what it takes to be a great husband, and that is to keep his family safe.

And he keeps me safe by not consuming my freedom and selflessly sacrificing himself, every single day.

Maybe one day I’ll stop crying when I change the name on a loyalty account. But for now, that’s not what happens.

So there’s a small trauma dump into the grief I felt in becoming a wife and stepping into the life of my dream.

How, fucking, unexpected.

I’m out.

Sarah x