settling in to marriage

Bunny and I never looked at the day of our wedding as a life changing event. Neither of us really had any expectation that there would be some giant, life changing moment or that we'd feel very different from the other side. And the day we eloped itself? Surprisingly normal. Calm morning, when I could drown out the fact that my mom was super excited and expressing it in ways that were making both Bunny and I anxious, and then the rest of the day was just a cloud of happiness and enjoyment of each other. But life changing? No.

After almost four years together, living with each other for more than half that time, we already knew each other's ins and outs. We'd already built up our own team spirit and team rules, and had supported each other on major life changing events like when Bunny had quit his job to go back to school. We kept our money in separate bank accounts, but our budgets were integrated and we both had a say in how money was spent and saved and we split expenses in ways that made sense to us rather than a fifty-fifty even split. After the year of deaths, unemployment and unexpected moves we had already done the "or worse" part of living a life together, and knew that together we could walk out the firestorm stronger than we'd been  when it started. It didn't leave a lot of room for change, even at the moment of marriage.

And on my end, the big cosmic shift of fireworks going off and choirs of angels singing to let me know that my world was changing occurred way back the moment I met Bunny. So I wasn't really expecting a repeat performance of that: the universe had already given me the celebration of coming home to the person I was supposed to be with.

For us, on the surface, marriage has changed absolutely nothing. Our day to day lives function the same, we're doing the work on getting bank accounts in order but we've already agreed on how the family budget runs (and it's an extension of how the old budgets ran), and we love each other just as much. Oh, now Bunny gets to call me "wifey" or "his lovely wife" depending on his mood and I get to call him my "wonderful husband". Our key pet name for each other is still "lover", though, just new ones have been added to the mix. I get called pretty more often now, but that's not a big change.

Underneath, though? There I'm not so sure. It's hard to describe but still there's this subtle feeling as if this one extra thing has shifted into place in our relationship in a way that doesn't actually affect anything but we can still sense it. The only way Bunny or I know how to describe it? Our relationship is exactly the same, but way more awesome. It took some time for us to recognize that extra awesome shift, but it's definitely there in a very subtle way.

It's strange how many different expectations we had going into the whole "being married" thing, and how we were exactly right and exactly wrong at the same time. But being here, married, now? It feels amazing.