Category: Love

We Got Married… Now What?

Getting married is one of the most exciting events of a person’s life. You get to spend the rest of your life with your greatest love and your best friend. It’s a profound moment and one that I’ll never forget.

But when it’s all over, then comes the big question— what’s next?

After all of the literal blood, sweat, tears, and planning that goes into a wedding, in an instant it’s done. For some it’s a moment of relief. There’s no more planning to do, no more decisions to be made, no more conversations to be had about napkin colors and flower arrangement height. For others, a wedding being over brings sadness that the fun is over, or playing the ‘Monday Morning Quarterback.’

I fall into the first category— I was glad for it to be over. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy every minute of my wedding, I was just glad I didn’t have to keep planning it and thinking about it and agonizing over every detail. After spending the whole day talking to 140 of our closest friends and family, I was excited to not talk to anyone, instead spending two weeks on a beach in the Caribbean with my new husband.

Having lived together before getting married, day-to-day, nothing much changed. We’d still have the same routine, but I will say that something did and does feel different. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is, but I think it comes down to the concept of being bound together for life that sort of differentiates pre-marriage life from the rest of life.

So now what am I doing?

When we got back from our amazing Caribbean adventure, we started the process of moving from NJ to NH and have been here for the past month or so. After planning and executing the wedding, you could say that this was the next major logistical event to orchestrate. (I’m starting to sense a planning theme in my life.) Having moved quite a bit in the last few years, I can tell you quite honestly that moving is truly terrible, even when everything goes smoothly. But that’s a post for another time!

ANYWAY- The moral of the story is that our wedding was amazing, and once it was over, I’ve been almost immediately onto the next event, though definitely (thankfully) not as large-scale. Enjoy every minute of it and enjoy the calm after the storm… which can also be considered the calm before the next storm… Either way, take it all in.

by Nora Wolf

5 Things to Look For in a Relationship

I’m going to preface this post by saying that I am currently engaged to a wonderful guy, and although things are going great now, I have certainly had more than my share of terrible experiences with relationships.

The prime example would be that I dated a convicted felon. Okay, maybe that description is a bit harsh, but I did knowingly go out with a guy who had stolen… a chalice… from a church… BEFORE we were dating. Long story short, we dated for about five months, during most of which time I was away at college, and when we broke up he proceeded to send me messages and texts and try just about every which-way to get in contact with me LONG after an acceptable mourning time for our deceased relationship.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that everyone’s got bad relationship stories, but not everybody has good ones.

So what does this mean when it comes to finding a great relationship?

1- Look for someone who supports you. No, this does not mean someone who always says “yes, dear,” and goes with whatever plan you’ve concocted that day. This is a person who will push you toward your dreams and goals and reel you back in when you stray from a path that is good for you.

2- Look for someone who makes you feel good. Support doesn’t necessarily mean it feels good. Think tough- love. Supportive, yes, but maybe you don’t want someone who only supports you through these means. Maybe you do want tough love all the time, but don’t want someone who supports you by always talking about your feelings. Maybe you do. In other words- figure out how you best receive support, then look for someone who best gives support in a way that matches your needs.

3- Look for a partner who pushes you. Every one of us has things we need to work on. For me, it is that I am all over the place. I start off on a career path or a diet or a workout plan, etc., try it for a few weeks or months and then go off in another direction. I needed someone to be a grounding presence for me. Someone steady. I also needed someone to push me to open up and talk about feelings. Which brings us to the next criteria:

4- Look for a person who you can open up to. Self- explanatory, right? Find someone who you are comfortable enough with to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets.

5- Look for someone you’re attracted to. By this I mean someone who you find attractive on a physical level, sure, but also on a spiritual level. At a certain point, usually just beyond the “honeymoon phase,” for me, I’d always have an intuitive sense of whether or not the relationship was good for me through some form of a gut feeling. Usually I’d figure out that it wasn’t, but stay in it anyway, but that’s beside the point. Find someone who you find yourself still wanting to be around after the “honeymoon phase.” Someone who makes you happy and makes you look at them the way you look at a giant bowl of mac and cheese. Makes you smile, right? That’s the gut feeling to look for.

These suggestions are by no means hard-and-fast rules. They’re things I should have looked for in relationships, and ultimately ended up stumbling into that hopefully you can stumble upon, too!

by Nora Wolf