Everything was going well leading up to our very first Valentine's Day together. I'd broken up with the boyfriend back home months before. Darrell and I spent more time together than I'd ever spent with another person not in my immediate family. He'd given me a pretty ring for Christmas. We'd basically already decided that marriage was in our future. And he gave me the most wonderful Valentine's gift - a plaque that he engraved himself with my favorite Bible verses.
Fast forward one year. He gave me a book for Valentine's Day. I cried. Although, looking back, there was really a lot more to it than that.
Darrell had been spending a lot of time on a big project for one of his classes. There were days I wouldn't see him at all, times that he would even stay at the lab through the night and not call me. I wasn't used to that, even after spending a summer apart. I was getting used to my new major, and still wondering if I'd made the right decision in changing it. We each had roommate issues and parent issues. It seemed like we were going to have to wait to even get engaged.
While shopping together one day before Valentine's Day, I picked up a book and started looking through it. It was a new book in a series I liked, but it was just now out in hardback, so I put it down, thinking I'd wait and buy it when it was out in paperback and cost less. A few days later, that's what I got for Valentine's Day from Darrell, and I felt disappointed that he'd get me a book I didn't even care enough about to buy myself before the paperback came out, compared to the gift from the year before that he'd worked so hard on. I think it just set off all of the other feelings I was having then, too.
From his perspective, he thought he was getting me something I really wanted, something that I thought was too expensive to buy for myself right then. He knew already how much I loved to read. He wanted to make me happy, and tears were the last thing he'd expected. He has seldom bought me a book since then, only a few times as a Christmas present among other presents. Looking back, I love him for the thought he put into it, but at the time, all I could do is cry, and probably not even do a very good job of explaining why.
We all speak at least a slightly different language. We have different experiences before we meet, and we have different cues and body language to help bring meaning to our conversations and actions. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to learn to understand all of those in your spouse. I can't guarantee that you will stay together for the long run if you don't fully commit to trying, but I can just about guarantee that you won't stay together (at least happily) if you don't.
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