This blog post is part two of a three part series entitled: What No One Told Me About Marriage.

As I reflect on conversations with a sweet friend who is also married, I realize so many of our conversations begin or end with “But no one told me_____!”. This series is a small–but mighty–look into a few topics that perhaps no one has also told you about as it relates to marriage.

Here is the first post, What No One Told Me About Marriage Part 1: Navigating Your Past.

Navigating Competing Priorities

Shamar and I started to think seriously about marriage at the same time a really exciting job opportunity was going to potentially move me from Charlotte to DC. He made it very clear that he didn’t want to live in two separate cities while engaged and despite this fact continued to support and encourage my desire for this job, so he did the most logical thing:

He followed me to DC.

He decided he was moving before he even had a job. Nevermind the fact he had a promising path to leadership at the school he was teaching at in Charlotte. Together, we prioritized my opportunity because it wasn’t one that would come around again. During our first year in DC, we continued to prioritize my work.

Despite the fact we were engaged, I did very little but work.

We invested in a phenomenal wedding planner because my number one priority was our marriage, not our wedding.

I was traveling 2-3 weeks out of every month and I didn’t have time to think through all of the details of our wedding.

I tasted the food/cake (best part ever), found the dress, locked down the venue and hopped on the plane for the bachelorette party. Everything else was done by the planner or my bridesmaids.

Don’t get me wrong. I surely didn’t see my wedding as a nuisance. I was Pinterest pinning and idea sharing with the best of them. I would say 98% of my engagement year and 100% of my wedding day were stress free. I was just hyper aware of how finite my time was during this season and I could only give so much time to planning my wedding given the other priorities in my life.

Fast forward almost three years and Shamar has just finished the first draft of an incredible book (it’s good, y’all and not just because he’s my forever boo). Believing God for favor and abundance over Shamar’s writing projects, we have had to have another conversation about our priorities.

This time, Shamar’s career comes first.

And that means potentially waiting until we see where his writing takes us to decide when we have children.

I say all of this to say, you will navigate priority shifts that sometimes put your aspirations on top and sometimes puts them on the backburner.

When your career, education, small business idea, or even book are the focus of your marriage everything feels incredible! But if you’ve never had to readjust your priorities for someone else’s it can be hard.

I have always been someone who gets what she wants and has never had to de-prioritize my vision for someone else. Especially since Shamar has literally been prioritizing my opportunities since before we were husband and wife.

But now that’s changing and while it felt frustrating at first, I am more than okay with it now.

Being married to Shamar has shown me what it looks like to fiercely and unconditionally push your partner toward their success and to realize that their success is also yours.

I know the time will come again when an opportunity too big to pass up will present itself to me and we will have to sit down and think about what it will mean for the way our household opporates and who is responsible for what.

And while this is such a big part of what marriage is, it is something I didn’t think about.

Supporting Shamar’s dreams?

Absolutely.

Shamar’s dreams meaning sometimes the de-prioritization of my own?

Never.

But the reality is sometimes your ambitions need to cool down for a season if you want to see your husband reach success.

I’m grateful for a husband who lead by example in this area. Who never in his life told me not to go after something, not to travel, or not to work a grueling day in order to see through what I knew was my calling. He stayed up while I was writing proposals, was at every public event for my work, and proofreads everything from email correspondences to blog posts.

So while there were questions in my mind about how we are going to make this next chapter in our lives, his career, and his writing there was never any doubt that we would make it work.

Because that’s what we’ll do.

And that’s what you guys will do too.

I know boss women who are taking their careers to the next level. Authors and principals who are navigating this same path. This path that says for right now dads are on sick kid pick up and breakfast duty. Who know that in order to priotize their work it means their partners need to de-prioritize their ambitions for a season.

But if you don’t walk into your marriage (notice I said marriage? Permanent partnership? Don’t be out here choosing your boyfriend or that situationship over the bomb opportunities that are being placed in front of you. If it’s going to work out, y’all will find a way to make it work while you live out your purpose.) knowing that there will be times when you have to do less so your partner can do more, it will be hard for either of you to find success.

As someone who had no problem prioritizing her goals over a relationship, this was something that took a little adjusting to once I chose to enter into a permanent partnership.

And while I don’t know all of you personally.

I know you.

You come here to read because you’re like me. Driven, goal-oriented, unapologetic women who know what you are being called to do and so you do it.

Which is why I knew I needed to call this out, because you will find yourselves in beautiful marriages with people who are the very same way.

And I don’t want this to be you all’s stumbling block.

I also don’t want you to think I am asking you (or your husband) to hide under a rock while the other flourishes. Right around the time Shamar started writing his book, I launched Black Girl Musings.

His greatness doesn’t prevent my own. And for the last few months, I have blocked and tackled so that he has time to write. I’ve left him alone when he went into “The Writing Cave” (which is really just the opposite side of our couch with some noise cancelling headphones). I’ve taken on a few more of the responsibilities that we typically share around the house. And for now, I’ve committed to work opportunities that allow for me to be closer to home in case his opportunities take him farther from it.

And in these months, I have learned more about myself and my needs, built an incredible foundation for a platform that I am believing will allow me to connect with even more people, and has allowed me to be husband’s biggest cheerleader, proofreader, and idea generator.

There’s magic in our musings (and our sacrifice),
Nicole