While I anticipated that marriage would change my circumstances, I did not anticipate how much it would change me.
Yes, my relationship is full of plenty of romance and laughter and companionship, but it’s also full of difficult conversations, compromise, and sacrifice. In my pre-engagement idealistic daydreams of marriage, my fiancé was simply “husband,” a generic abstract entity that made no demands on me, who simply provided for me and met my needs. Surely I knew””somewhere and vaguely””that marriage would call on me to make sacrifices, but making sacrifices in the abstract? Piece of cake. Making actual, concrete sacrifices? Anything but. My fiancé’s very presence in my life challenges me to expand my perspective, to direct my attention outward, and to seek the good of someone else. Instead of rescuing me from my burdens, my fiancé actually rescues me from my self-centeredness.
Read it all (my emphasis).