I woke up the other day with a much needed epiphany. During 12 years of marriage, my wife and I have often found ourselves facing the same issues repeatedly in our relationship. The struggles are nothing incredibly serious (and nothing I feel inclined to go into detail about here on the internet), but they are things that have been addressed multiple times in one way or another over the past decade. And yet, when I grow lax in reigning in my behavior to better meet the needs of my spouse, we end up having the same conversation every few years. Points of tension that we both felt were resolved at one time creep back into our relationship, reopening old rifts that we assumed we had closed for good.

After one such conversation recently, I awoke the next day with a clarity about my behavior and habits that I had never experienced before. Occasionally I will wake up in the dead of night with what I believe to be a revolutionary idea, only to discover after the sun rises, it was merely a wisp of stupidity emerging in the state between slumber and lucidity.

For a while, I thought I was going try my hand at stand up comedy. I kept a note in my phone with what I believed to be incredible jokes that I would one day weave into a five minute set that would wow a crowd at an open mic night. Occasionally, I would dream up the “perfect” joke around 3 AM, and one in particular would haunt me over and over: “To my knowledge, I’ve never peed on my pillow, but it sure is yellow for some reason.” On multiple occasions this “joke” woke me from a deep sleep, and I was sure it was as good as, if not better, than whatever Nate Bargatze had cooked up for his next special.

As you can see, my late night “strokes of genius” are not typically worth anything once dawn breaks. But this recent epiphany not only felt powerful as I was emerging from a REM cycle, it proved to be poignant to me even after the coffee kicked in hours later.

“I want my relationship with my wife to be a table, but it is actually a garden.”

With very little intentional upkeep, a nice, sturdy, wooden dinner table can be in the same family for decades. Occasionally you may need to tighten a bolt or refinish the surface, but ultimately, wiping it down after every meal is enough to keep it in great condition. Because a table is sheltered from the elements as it sits in your dining room or breakfast nook, short of some sort of home disaster, the table will remain sturdy and useful for many years, and you barely have to think about it.

If you have ever dabbled in the hobby of gardening, you understand that the upkeep of a table is vastly different from the maintenance required for a living biome that you are trying to coax into blooming. You pull the weeds one week, and new weeds are eager to replace them the next. Pruning back the dead and rotting branches to allow for new vines surely brings new growth, but it also somehow leads to new decay that must be pruned again weeks later. Take appropriate measures to deal with one pest in one season, and you will be overwhelmed with a new type of bug or animal when the weather changes.

No matter what you do, and how hard you work, a garden requires constant attention and, even then, the elements that your garden faces are completely out of your control. The weather has the power to wreck all of your hard work in one cold snap. With one fluke hard freeze in March, your garden can sputter and struggle, and none of it is your fault.

Inside your home, your dinner table is sturdy, unbothered, and simple. But your table is also dead. It cannot grow. It cannot provide nourishment. It cannot miraculously start as one thing, and somehow become something bigger, more beautiful, and unexpected.

I realized that I was treating my marriage like a table and not a garden. If I addressed something, I expected that issue to be resolved and stay resolved. Like putting a new stain on a table, I thought if I put in some effort once to fix an issue, that work should remain unchanged for years. I was an idiot.

The weeds that come up in our relationship with our parenting partner can regrow faster than we think possible. Having one or two conversations about a specific struggle every few years will not be enough to fight back the encroaching growth seeking to strangle our connection to each other. Regular, disciplined work to find the issues and remove them is needed. And because humans are living, breathing organisms, issues we once thought resolved can and do return if we are not diligent.

We put in effort to prune back bad habits and attitudes as they develop over the years. For a few weeks, we see our relationship bloom in new ways and then, suddenly, that growth can come to a screeching halt when we discover a new part of ourselves has grown unchecked, interfering with whatever progress we made by addressing the previous issue.

And no matter how hard we work, external factors out of our control can stifle any proliferation of our blooming love and partnership. Kids can somehow create a new and overwhelming problem with every new stage of development. Our jobs can smother our ability to flourish in our pursuit of being better partners. Deaths in the family, friendship drama, political uncertainty, and a million other things can absolutely overwhelm our delicate relationship with our parenting partners.

But just like a garden, with consistent, persistent effort, our relationship can grow into something that is both beautiful and nourishing. But patience is required. And much of the results of our efforts may be invisible for a time, growing and changing under the surface. We may have the same conversation every week for a year before we see the growth we so desperately need. But that’s what living organisms need to thrive; time, energy, and diligent care. Tables are dead. Gardens are alive. And I’d much rather have a garden marriage than a table one.

Your Relationship Is Not A Table

“I want my relationship with my wife to be a table, but it is actually a garden.”