I believe marriage has three elements: business, love, and partnership — a trinity if you will.

To truly evaluate ourselves, we need to know is this a business problem, a love problem, or a partnership problem?

Business.

The daily’s. Who is going to take out the trash and wash the dishes (if you decide to live together). Who is going to cook dinner on which nights? How does grocery shopping work? Do we combine bank accounts or nah? Do we have access to each other’s passwords? Will we have a separate or joint savings account?

I don’t speak much on the business of marriage because most people don’t like to hear it. Nobody wants to associate business concepts with an eternal commitment. Most of us, want to believe that every day is a frame on an Instagram profile.

The business of marriage is not necessarily about receipts and taxes (although it is something to talk about — married filing joint or nah?). It’s more so about how this marriage is going to operate. How are we going to function from day to day?

What holiday will we spend with whose family and when should I alert you that I’ve cut off all my hair? How will we speak to each other and make decisions? Is the man the head of the household or will we make decisions together? When is it time to seek counsel?

In our 7 years of marriage, my husband and I have worked through these questions over and over again. As things change, we change, so we’re constantly renegotiating the proverbial contract. We’re always shifting and making decisions that best impact our union. What will make us the most efficient and functional as a couple? How do we do this marriage thing so that we’re both well and eager to stay together?

Love

Love is the reason most of us get into marriage in the first place. We love a person, we enjoy their presence, we enjoy spending time with them — let’s get married.

And that’s ok. In fact, that’s probably preferred. I want to love my husband and I want him to love me — fact. But how we each define love varies from person to person and marriage to marriage.

Love is holding hands and taking walks. It’s romance and dinner and kind words. Love is service and sacrifice. It’s keeping your word, and defending your honor. It’s defending the honor of your union.

Love is apologizing when you’re wrong. It’s butterflies and friendship. It’s being a friend to one another. Love is being there but it’s also giving each other space when you need it. And sometimes, love can’t be defined or explained, it just is.

People say love is a choice, and I agree. It’s also intrinsic and created and cultivated. Love is complex because sometimes, it has no bearing on whether or not you should be married to a person.

Love isn’t always the determining factor for why you should marry a person, but it can be the one reason you stay married.

We’ve learned, that love isn’t the only reason you should stay married, but it’s a damn good one.

Partnership

This is my favorite one. Teamwork makes the mothafkn dream work. My husband and I are strong in this area. Perhaps our strongest. Partnership first, love second, business third.

We complement each other — which is great. But the true beauty of partnership is being able to master the art of flow.

My husband and I are opposites. I plan, he executes. I worry, he calms. I am judgmental, he is objective. The list goes on and on and on. We knew we were different shortly after we got married. What we’ve mastered as we’ve gotten older is how to capitalize on that.

Years ago, I was sitting at a table with two friends crying about how miserable I was. I was trying to start a career and my husband was trying to keep our family together. It was a mess. We were both going in opposite directions yet trying to hold onto a marriage. One of my friends asked me, “have y’all ever thought of collaborating with each other?”

I heard her clearly and still think about it til this day. Collaborating. Working together. Using what we have to help each other forward. I knew the concept well but I didn’t know how to do it.

It took practice. I liken it to a basketball team running up and down the court moving around to assist one another for one common goal, getting to the basket. Or blocking the shot. Or distracting the shooter during a foul shot. The team works together. Somehow, their skills and strengths come together to move the team forward, to accomplish the goal.

We’re working on our flow more and more everyday and the more we do, the better we get. We can go weeks in our flow, complementing each other; our actions finishing each others thoughts, saying the same thing at the same time. And then we can have weeks we’re off, and in those moments, we have to address whatever is going on. We’ve gotten better at it. I used to really feel bad about our off weeks but if we plan to stay together forever, we have time to get it right.

We evaluate ourselves and our union often. We give it a grade and then we work on the low points.

And we’re just people. Not superheroes or prodigies. We’re just people who have chosen to get together, be together, and do life better together. Dassit.

And after 7 years of doing it, I’d say we’re doing pretty well.