One of the Biggest Challenges of Married Life in the Beginning

One of the greatest challenges during the beginning of married life is learning how to guard your time.

Sometimes well-meaning people can unintentionally intrude upon the foundational time a couple needs to bond, learn one another, establish routines, and build a life together. People may want to visit, call, invite you places, involve you in activities, or immediately pull you into family, friendship, and church responsibilities. None of this is necessarily coming from a bad place. However, a new marriage still needs space.

My marriage began in a very unorthodox way. In many ways, it was placed on pause for four and a half years because of immigration. I did not have the traditional honeymoon period where a couple gets married, goes on a honeymoon, spends uninterrupted time bonding, and then gradually settles into everyday life together.

Our beginning was stop and go, stop and go.

Every time I visited Nigeria, it felt like a two-month honeymoon. My husband was not working a regular job there, so he had all the time in the world for me. We could wake up together, spend the day together, talk for hours, go places, rest, and simply enjoy being husband and wife.

Then I would return to the United States, and our married life would be placed on pause again.

When my husband finally came to the United States, he arrived during the last few days of my Christmas break. I am incredibly grateful that we had even those few days before I had to return to work. However, some of that limited time was immediately divided among family, friends, and church members who were understandably excited to welcome him.

Their excitement came from love, but I also realized that we needed time that belonged only to us.

We were not simply newlyweds. We were a married couple who had spent four and a half years trying to begin a life that immigration repeatedly interrupted. We needed room to reconnect, adjust to living under the same roof, learn each other’s daily habits, and finally experience marriage without an approaching departure date hanging over us.

That kind of time is not selfish. It is foundational.