After 10 years, a marriage deserves an honest and unflinching appraisal

Ten years into our marriage – my second shot at forever – and I’m staring at a blank anniversary card. They cost so much you don’t want to stuff up what you write, so I’m having a practice run to get it right for the real thing.

Ergh. What do you write to the man who’s seen you through a decade of your midlife? The one who parachuted into a life already in progress, who chose someone with history, with children not his own?

How does a marriage stack up after 10 years of real life?Credit: iStock

The one mature enough to dedicate the first five minutes of his groom’s speech to thanking his bride’s ex for being an extraordinary husband and father?

Chris was a first-time groom at 46 whose dying dad – a family lawyer – warned him when he heard my stats sheet: 48, three kids, divorced. “Be careful, son.” And yet, where his dad saw danger, Chris saw salvation. Walked into the fire. I wish Bryan got to see how stylish a husband his son is, and how his choice of bride turned out OK.

That guy deserves zero platitudes and no saccharine cliches on his anniversary. A decade warrants bravery and unflinching honesty of the kind even TV relationship experts might advise against. Because what I want to say is complicated. And I might need between five and 12 cards, but here goes:

Darling. I still get a kick out of seeing the secure glint of your wedding ring. Your face is my Kryptonite, your sardonic asides my joy. I’d choose you in a million lifetimes because you’re never boring or needy, although that thing where you have an unbroken seven-hour sleep then complain you slept badly drives me nuts.

I reckon you could still win a bar fight if you had to, but you’ve been the softest touch with our dogs. And you’ve loved my children with steely loyalty and the fun of being the cool parent with the chequered history, the great advice and zero hectoring.

You’re the second last person I’d trust with handyman stuff.

You frustrate the hell out of me because you don’t seem to know that after 5pm only children wear shorts with short-sleeved tops.

Without doubt, I love you. Not like I did. Not with the desperate need to suck you dry of stories, humour, experience like at the beginning. Now I love you in a way that veers between vague disinterest in the predictability of it all and occasional fury because you matter so much.

But sometimes I hate you too. Is that usual in a 10-year-old marriage? I can’t remember from first time around.

I hate that while you’d step in front of a bus to save me from harm, some days, somehow, you are the bus. Refusing to do the one thing twice a week I ask for – it’s not scary, not expensive, and it’s not a weird sex thing – then getting shitty when I remind you. And thus an innocuous issue turns into a festival of hot shrieking (me) and icy coldness (you).

Your drinking. Christ. That deserves its own card. You know what that did. To me. To us. How I sat beside you, smiling at parties, shrinking in private. There were nights I wanted to grab my passport and run but couldn’t remember the code to the briefcase safe.

Time and again I’ve calculated the maths of sacrifice in long-term love. How much of yourself can you surrender to save someone else? How much of them can you sacrifice to save yourself? What do we need to give, take, lose? And would I know if it was time to bail before I forgot how?

And in the end, I didn’t need to do anything. You did. And here we are, a decade after stepping out into the sunlight from the Fitzroy Town Hall to Steve Winwood’s When You See a Chance. Together.

Ten years. The tin anniversary. For resilience, the ability to be shaped and reshaped without breaking, conduct warmth and weather storm. To polish up beautifully if tarnished.

Let’s keep putting more dings on this thing. It’s solid enough.

Love, Kate

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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