Last week, I asked my Instagram followers: What marital challenges are you facing? Of those who responded, ninety percent named marital intimacy. They admitted exhaustion and an inability to find time for their husbands. Most expressed a desire to improve in the area of intimacy with their husbands, but it felt impossible. When little children need you constantly, it’s difficult to find a way to meet your husband’s needs. Children get in the way, they interrupt, and sometimes we just don’t want anyone else to touch us at the end of the day. I completely understand. I’ve been physically and mentally exhausted for twelve of the fifteen years of our…

As a young teenager, I made a rather extensive list of all the qualities I was looking for in a husband. I combined traits from many of the men I respected—plus a few extras—just to be sure I found the man who would fulfill all my hopes and dreams. When I graduated from college without a ring on my finger, I started to carefully examine my curated list. Were my standards too high? What could I eliminate? I began to whittle away, scribbling out traits I knew weren’t necessary, maybe even ridiculous.  By the time I met my husband, the list was shorter than the one I wrote in the…

My husband brought several pieces of furniture into our marriage: six woven dining chairs, two barstools, and a wooden bookshelf. Although several chairs are now wobbly from fifteen years of use, we cannot bring ourselves to part with them. I’m okay with this because they’re functional, and new dining room chairs are expensive. However, the bookshelf is another story. I do not like it, and I have never liked it. The wood stain is too red, it’s not large enough to fit all of our books, and its irregular size limits its placement in any apartment or home we’ve lived in. But my husband doesn’t want to part with it.…

A few months ago, I took the plunge and subscribed to a monthly box of new clothes. You may have heard of Stitch Fix. Well, it’s both wonderful to have clothes delivered to my door, but it’s also a bit more expensive than my typical wardrobe purchases. But I figured if I’m about to turn 40, I should invest in my clothes and find items I both like and will last. I don’t keep everything they send me, but the items I do keep, well, I’m diligently tending to them. When I threw a load of laundry in the other day, I carefully read the tag on my new pair…

I was listening to an interview recently with TV and film producer, J.J. Abrams, in which he was telling the story of how his career started. He floundered in the beginning, unsure which direction to go, or what content to create. His wife offered him some solid advice: Write about what you love. Write what you care about. So, he did. And he went on to produce some of the most loved films and TV series of our time. Well, this is me, writing about something important to me, and for which I care deeply about: marriage. And more specifically, being a wife. I’ve been a wife for the past…

In the corner of the yard, beside the white picket fence, and about fifteen feet from where the street sweeper comes once a month to clean out the debris on the edge of the road, we planted an apple tree. She’s a beauty, quietly blessing us with sweet flowers in spring, spreading a blanket of shade over the lacecap hydrangea who sits at her feet, and giving us glimpses of hope in a harvest as summer reaches its peak. We’ve tried to shoo away the bugs who nibble on her fruit, and we sometimes stare at her spotted leaves wondering what disease might be coursing through her system. Last year…