Advice to a New Wife

Advice to a New Wife

Not all of the dreams
Which you believe in now
Can come true
But this conclusion
Must come from you

You will learn marriage can risk
Time, life and your health
As in the early years, alone, you work so hard
To make these dreams reality
No matter what was whispered from his side of the bed
Words which slipped so easily into your head

Dreams aren’t meant to have and to hold
They are to keep you going through the years
When really there is nothing else
But the daily grind and your dreaming mind
Is this the advice you should give to a new wife?

That shiny ring which, at first
You never want to take off
Will dull and scratch, quite quickly in fact
And the promises you made
For one of you will start to fade

Or were false when made
On that most special of days
They say the first year of marriage is the hardest
As you both adjust to your married ways

You will believe that marriage
Comes with certain guarantees
But it will not
Don’t invest too much of yourself
In that which may be

Every marriage, however it seems
Is a one sided thing, whilst one thrives
The other is paid in unrequited dreams
And failed schemes

Don’t try to do this on your own
However beautiful the bubble you are in
When something, or someone
Comes along with that pin
It will not be your spouse to which you turn
But to others who maybe you have not seem for some time

Who you will be shocked to learn
Never thought it was going to work out anyway
Not understanding why you got married to him
In the first place

You will feel stupid and hurt
That you ever believed your marriage would work
Couldn’t they not have hinted at that before?
If not in words alone?

Don’t look at others and think
That there’s is the perfect marriage
That there’s is somehow working
As everyone in the family album is smiling

Their marriage will be just like yours
One sided and with its own unique flaws
But flaws are flaws
Remember no one ever really knows
What goes on behind closed doors

Know that these flaws were invited guests
At their day as at yours
But were disguised by images of
White trains gracing sunlit church floors
The day you thought your single life would be no more
That a life of guaranteed happiness
Lay down that isle and beyond the church door

That day the car sped away
Tins clattering against the tarmac floor
As you kissed each other
As you never had before
Believing marriage was the elixir of happiness
As you started your life
As a new wife....

Try to keep a little secret
Just for yourself
Try to preserve at least something from before
For your own health
Keep it in a box or behind the clock on the shelf
It’s all too easy to lose yourself in a marriage

Get it out every once in a while
And remember yourself
That you had a life before him
At which you did quite well
Before you made those promises
However much they were meant

As you may find that when the ivory tower
You have created in your mind
Bumps and sways or just plain falls down
That you are spent, that there is nothing left

Only what remains of who you once were
Destroyed and bereft
That you have lost too much to begin again
Without him

Anna Archichek