That's where the skunks like to go. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today I'm going to talk about marriage. Well, a little bit about marriage. I should call this marriage part one. Not that all the parts will be consecutive, but I started thinking today that I haven't really talked a lot about marriage, about my marriage, and there's a lot of good stuff involved with it. And there's a lot of good stuff that comes up when you're married. But I'm not going to tell secrets out of school. I'm going to preserve my husband's dignity and his privacy, but there is still a lot of good stuff around marriage. So marriage for an only child, I think, is a good thing, because at some point in your life and I didn't get married young Bill and I met when I was in my 30s. And well, he's 11 years older than me, so he was in his 40s.

We waited 17 and a half years to get married and some people when they hear that, they laugh or they're curious and they wonder why we waited so long. And sometimes I'll joke with people and I'll say well, we just had trouble committing. We were already committed to each other but for whatever reason we didn't get married. We didn't talk about marriage. Well, we talked about it a couple times in those 17 and a half years, but it wasn't something that was horribly important to us. I realized maybe halfway through that period of time that marriage is something that's usually, or should be usually, when you have children together makes it easier for several reasons. But we never had kids or really wanted to have kids. I mean, maybe we went through that thought process for about a week, but in the end we didn't have children. So why did we get married eventually? Well, we had been through many medical issues for Bill and we had spent a lot of time in hospitals, at doctor visits and at some point it just kind of made sense to be married.

I'll say, for me it had some unexpected benefits that I didn't ever think about. I didn't anticipate, like I said, they were unexpected, but I felt instantly a much greater sense of security, and I'm not talking about financial security or you know something like that, I'm talking about just emotional security. I was very secure in my relationship with Bill because I knew that we would, you know, most likely I mean 99%, um that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, but we we weren't talking about marriage, right, and so when we got married, though it, it changed something and it made me feel more secure and it made me feel more confident because of that, and I guess I felt a greater sense of love and commitment coming from him, and I think he also was surprised, in a way, that he felt the same way. There were some things that he said early on that indicated that he felt that way, and I think that's kind of sweet.

But a marriage, like any other relationship, is not always easy, right. I mean any kind of relationship that you've had with another person. I mean any kind of relationship that you've had with another person, whether it's a family member or a friend, or even a coworker or a boss or anything. Any kind of a relationship is never easy 100% of the time, but there are those challenges that come up right and, um, sometimes you think, why, why, why am I here? Why, why am I here?

Um, this has been a challenging week for us in a couple of ways. Um, the middle of the week we had a day where I had oh my gosh, I had a really bad migraine that just wouldn't go away, and I it's been a while since I've had a migraine. I don't know if it's the change in weather or the stress. I I don't know, but really bad took my medication, didn't go away. Boy, that really sucked okay, and he had some really severe neuropathy pains in his one foot. They're, you know, feeling a stabbing pain in your foot. And it's because of his partial amputations he's had over the years and the diabetes. But these were really bad pains and so we were really both struggling to get through that day and the next day, I think not really sure why that happened to him, since he hadn't had it in a while, but it just happens. You have injury to those nerves because of the surgeries and or it's because of your blood sugar issues over the years.

Anyway, it's not good, but there are times when you have to deal with something that comes up, whether or not it's an easy thing, it's a little thing, it's a minor thing, or it's it's an easy thing, it's a little thing, it's a minor thing, or it's maybe a bigger deal, like when we had the fires and we had the evacuation order, and it's something that you have to deal with. Or it's something with the house, something that we have to make a decision on Some big repair, some big issue, some problem keeping things up, maintaining the house. I think being married was a lot easier when we lived in an apartment, because there wasn't the maintenance issues that we have, because there wasn't the maintenance issues that we have now with the house. We don't argue about it or anything, but it's just.

Life in general is more complicated when you have to take care of all these parts. You have to make sure that the house is sound and all the different systems are working okay and all the different systems are working okay, and then you have to make sure that the yard, the garden, is safe and everything's watered, that you bought and planted and that you're caring for it and that there's no dead animals outside and that your fence is up and the dog can't get out and the cat's inside and all this stuff that goes on with your house, with your property. There's a lot to think about, and so when you're in an apartment you just live your life and you do your stuff and you do your work and you do your errands and if something goes wrong you just make a call and they come in and fix it. But it's not necessarily that easy when you own your own house. We had a thing a couple of weeks ago where our heater stopped heating. We had put in this new unit a year and a half ago and it just stopped and it was really cold in here and Bill woke up. I woke up in the middle of the night and we were freezing cold. So the guy that put it in for us taught me how to restart the system turn off the breakers you have to go outside. You have to go outside, turn off the electric breaker and wait and turn it back on.

But the door that covers this little system of they're not fuses anymore, but they're the breakers is really hard to get open and close sometimes and my thumbs don't work. They work, but they're really painful because of all the texting and the typing that I've done over the years and so I go out there, trudge out there in the rain or in the mud. It's on the side of the house, in the cold and the dark. It's where the skunks like to go, worried that I'm going to get sprayed and do my best. But this one time Bill said, well, what do you have to do out there? And I said, well, I've got to open this door, but I've had a really hard time getting it open. And then I can't get it closed. And he said, well, I'll go out, I'll go out with you and I'll, and I'll do that. And I said, oh, okay, you know, sure.

And so he came out with me. And it's treacherous, you have to go around the trash cans and it's dark in places. And you know, we went out at night and I don't want him to trip and fall and I don't want to trip and fall and I don't want to run into a skunk or a raccoon. And so we got out there and he got the door open for me and I showed him the breakers and you know, one of them is really, one of them is really hard. It's really you have to put a lot of some strength behind it.

And so I had him do it, and he was. And then he got the door closed and you have to kind of, you know it covers your electrical panel, so you want to make sure that it's closed because I mean that's not a good thing to leave that exposed. So anyway, he got it closed and then we trudged back inside and he said that's what you do every time. And I said, well, yeah, and he goes. Well, I don't know how you've been doing that. I'm like, well, I mean, I've been doing it because I had to do it. I mean, that's you know. Welcome to my world, right, what did you think I was doing out there? I mean, he's been on that side of the house before.

I guess he wasn't very familiar. I forget that this is where I grew up, very familiar. I forget that this is where I grew up and so I'm intimately familiar with every part of the house. Unfortunately, but not like he is. But we were leaving the house tonight and we took the dog with us and we were leaving and I locked the door and he was holding the screen door open for me and I had a headache and then he let me walk away and then he let the bane of my existence. He let the screen door go. He let it go. Now I would hold on to it and place it back and it's right. So he let it go, and so it's slammed shut, which is lovely for a headache. Anyway, there's those times when you feel your fuse is short right, but what I've learned is that it's better to keep it to yourself.

Married. You also feel like there's times when you know that your spouse your spouse has got a short fuse for you, but they're trying to keep it together too. So that's just the fun of being married. There's good parts to it and there's also challenges, but overall I would say that it's a very positive experience and I love my husband very much. I know he loves me, and there's more to say, and I'm sure in the coming weeks I'll be talking more about marriage.

I know there's some of you out there that have been divorced and some of you out there that are still single. Finding the right person is the challenge. It took me a long time it felt like a long time to find the right person, but it's worth the wait, I think. So that's all I've got for today, folks. Next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me If you like this episode. Please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries.