The “Love Your Spouse” Challenge is a challenge on Facebook where you post a photo with your spouse everyday for 7 days “to keep the celebration of LOVE, and the promotion of a UNION full of love and respect.”
Recently, an article has gone viral about a woman who refused to do the challenge for a few reasons. Even though she has done other challenges on social media, like the motherhood one where you post five photos that make you feel like a beautiful mom. One of her reasons was because she felt it portrayed an unrealistic image of a real marriage – that marriages aren’t all rainbows and unicorns and there was no such thing as fairy tales.
You can read the full article here: http://michiforniagirl.com/i-cannot-in-good-conscience-participate-in-the-love-your-spouse-challenge/
Here I am to share my differeing opinion. I was tagged by a friend to take part in the challenge. I accepted. Here’s why:
The challenge forced me to search for photos that we have had as a couple. Most start off with the “one” that made them husband and wife – their weeding photo. I chose to start off with one of our very first photos together before we were even married. After all, it was a challenge on love. Our first moment when we realized we were in love was the photo I chose to share because it reflected such a valuable time in our life. I continued on with photos of us together. The photos told a story – our story. Maybe one that only we would understand, but also one I wanted to share with our friends, family, and the world.
The photos showed the things we have done in our marriage. My husband and I just recently celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. That’s ten years of growing and changing – evolving into who we are today. Memories of traveling, moving, deployments, adding children, and so much more. They included both the good and teh bad, whether it is visible to others’ eyes. It is visible to ours as we reflected.
Sharing these photos made me realize now that we have added children to the family, we don’t take as many photos of us. Especially with only the two of us. It inspired me to start taking more photos of us together. Not just for us, but for memories, and most importantly for our children to look back on.
We are in our primes years. We are young. Our children are young. We are growing as a family. Even if they weren’t in the picture, my husband and I would still be growing. We would still be creating memories and writing our own story. That’s how I looked at this challenge.
Does the world need to know that my husband drinking straight from a milk jug or juice container annoys the h*ell out me? No. Does the world need to know every little petty argument we have? No. The challenge is to show that despite these hardships, these arguments, these petty little fights – we are still one. Our love is stronger than it has ever been, our union is a commitment to one another thru it all.
She mentioned that there is no such thing as fairytales, as a perfect marriage. But is there? Who is to say no marriage is perfect? Who defines that perfection?
The one within the union, correct? The one living it. The ones making family decisions and creating their story.
I feel both my marriage and our love is perfect for us. We are a fairytale, and our story hasn’t ended. And I don’t see it ending anytime soon.
Even though I have no clue what the future holds or where we will be, I do know one thing. My marriage stands for love, which includes the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of which we have endured. You can choose to see the challege as Negative Nancy with little confidence in your marriage because of your small and petty arguments, or you can view it as Positive Patricia and make sure you are living your fairytale. Which path do you want to take?
Find your love, your peace, your happiness, your perfection, your fairytale… and OWN it.
And by “your”, I do mean your marriage – your husband and yourself coming together as one and writing your own story.
"Inspire Desire" 