There’s this phone com­mer­cial on TV that makes me sick every time I watch it.

I mean, yeah … it makes me so mad, but it really pro­duces this awful awful lump in my throat.

Well here. Let me know what you think:

I swear … I get so angry that it makes me want to smack the liv­ing day­lights out of this woman!

Okay, so the guy does appear to look rather — ahem — nerdy. But as I look at the other things sur­round­ing the com­mer­cial, it appears to me that he is a guy that would do any­thing for his fam­ily. And his wife.

For exam­ple, unless the woman is a self-​​made mil­lion­aire who can afford a green­house sep­a­rate from the house … who do you think agreed have one built on their prop­erty? The husband.

Who appar­ently encour­ages her to enjoy her own gar­den­ing past time? The husband.

And yet, this wife appar­ently has no respect for him.

I don’t know about you … but I could never be that dis­re­spect­ful to the per­son I vowed to love and honor for the rest of my life.

Hubby & I arrive at Hogwarts!

But maybe that’s exactly it. Maybe there are cou­ples out there that act like that around each other. And maybe that’s why watch­ing this com­mer­cial makes me sick; because I would hate know­ing that there are peo­ple out there that may be mar­ried (or may stay mar­ried) and treat each other with such disrespect.

Don’t get me wrong. I under­stand that peo­ple can “fall out of love” with one another. And I can under­stand that there are cer­tain cir­cum­stances in a person’s life that would make a per­son marry (or stay in an unhappy mar­riage) for some­thing other than love. I can also under­stand why cer­tain cir­cum­stances can lead a cou­ple to divorce.

What I don’t under­stand is how a per­son can just be down­right dis­re­spect­ful to some­one else; cir­cum­stances or none. You can hate the sit­u­a­tion you cur­rently find your­self in, but don’t blame (or hate) any­one else for your cur­rent sit­u­a­tion but your own self. And cer­tainly don’t dis­re­spect some­one just to spite them.

I guess this com­mer­cial gets me so riled up because I can’t see myself ever act­ing that way with my Hus­band. Okay, I admit that I may have occa­sional dis­re­spect­ful thoughts, but: 1) I would never ever say them out loud and in front of him, and 2) they’re lit­er­ally fleet­ing thoughts that quickly get dis­missed when I real­ize exactly how much Hubby means to me.

If there’s one thing that Hubby & I have got­ten right in our life together is that we have a good solid mar­riage. While I don’t mean to be arro­gant by mak­ing that state­ment, I do know that we’ve heard from other cou­ples … other friends, that the two of us together are a great couple.

But here’s the thing. Although we appear to be such a great cou­ple to peo­ple we come in con­tact with … keep­ing our mar­riage together is not an easy task.

Mar­riage is hard. And it’s def­i­nitely not some­thing you can dis­miss lightly with a passive-​​aggressive state­ment like, “Mother was right. I should have mar­ried John Clark.” It takes a lot of patience, under­stand­ing and mutual respect for one another to make things work. And it espe­cially takes hon­est and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion /​ open dia­logue to keep the mar­riage working.

15 Years of Mar­riage and still in love …

I can’t dis­miss the fact that Hubby & I (as col­lege sweet­hearts) have grown into our mar­riage together; and there­fore haven’t expe­ri­enced some of the things that a cou­ple mar­ried later in life (and likely with more “dat­ing” expe­ri­ence) has. But I do know that past expe­ri­ences can affect how one may react while in cur­rent and/​or future relationships.

But I also can’t dis­miss that Hubby & I have also gone through our own expe­ri­ences that have chal­lenged our mar­riage in many ways.

Think about how we found out that we couldn’t have chil­dren the “tra­di­tional” way.

Think of the risks we took try­ing to finance infer­til­ity treat­ments that only had a cer­tain per­cent­age of working.

Think about the deci­sion we made to move to Chicago and now the deci­sion to move back to Detroit.

Think of the roller-​​coaster of emo­tions it took to finally come to the deci­sion to live child-​​free. Or the emo­tions of hav­ing to deal with the unex­pected death of a parent.

Now imag­ine what our mar­riage would be like if we didn’t love and respect one another. If we didn’t have hon­est and open dia­logues. Think of how hard it would be to go through every­thing we did with­out hav­ing each other’s back.

So yeah, I think that’s why that com­mer­cial makes me sick. And I hope that I’m not the only one out there that feels the same way …

So what do you have to say, oh Inter­nets? What do you think of this com­mer­cial? What are your thoughts about marriage?