Military Wife Quote: Be Angry About This

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I have been spending a lot of time at the gym. Over 10 months after having my second child, I’m more than ready to be back in the comparatively amazing shape I was in pre-pregnancy. I’m tired of the jiggle. I give forlorn glances to my favorite jeans. I long to wear my favorite top without sending all the world the unwritten message “Yes I have back fat, stop staring.”

Combined with a commitment not to buy any more Wheat Thins, the gym is starting to work. I’m a quick-fix kinda girl, so rapid weight loss would be my preference (ha!).

And then I saw this gem in Real Simple (our favorite magazine, as we’ve already confessed):

“It takes six months to get into shape and two weeks to get out of shape. Once you know this you can stop being angry about other things in life and only be angry about this.” -- Rita Rudner, “Naked Beneath My Clothes”

That was a jolt of reality perfect for one of our military wife quotes. It also got me thinking about how true that fact is about other things in life, too, not just being “in shape.”

It made me think about my military marriage.

After months and months of off-and-on absences and deployments I’d be fibbing if I said things are 100 percent peaches and cream over here. And you’d be fibbing if you said that about your relationship, too.

Why? Because just like staying fit, maintaining a relationship takes work. Hard, hard work. Stop maintaing -- the health of that relationship decreases. And getting it back? Much harder than maintaining it to start with.

What if those of use who are gym rats treated our marriage the same way we treat our bodies? We would spend an hour a day making sure it is happy. And we wouldn’t take a break for the upkeep because doing so would result in too much pain later.

Why does that seem so hard for relationships and so easy for physical fitness?

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