I'll have been married 11 years in January.

That's a long time.  Over a decade, almost a third of my life.

I have learned that being married does not automatically entitle you to a lifetime of happiness for nothing.

Marriage is a work in progress. People change...I'm not the same person I was 11 years ago, physically, mentally or spiritually, and neither is my husband.  Because the people change, the relationship changes.  I'm not just talking about the dynamics, I'm taking about the very essence of the relationship...the love, if you will.  You can't just sit back and expect your love to grow just because you have a wedding certificate.  You have to tend to it...feed it, nurture it, protect it.  You have to work at it.

Working at your relationship sounds like not-so-much-fun, huh?  It doesn't have to be that way.  If you truly love and cherish the person you're married to, if you truly commit yourself to them, the working at your relationship is worthwhile.  I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's great fun because it's not...sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's just plain miserable.  But, the rewards for the small amount of suffering and sadness....they can be beyond compare.  Love, if you tend to it properly, can be the most amazing thing you have ever experienced.  After 11 years I can tell you that I love my husband more than I ever thought possible.  I thought that I loved him as much as I could when we got married.....I was wrong.  My love for him knows no bounds.  I keep expecting it to hit a peak, to come to a pinnacle....and it hasn't.  It just gets better and deeper and more complex. 

There have been rough spots, times when both of us considered walking away and leaving it all behind.  It would have been easy to do....but I don't think I'd ever have got over it.  I know it would have been something I regretted for the rest of my life.  So, we toughed it out.  Our mantra sometimes has been 'this too shall pass'....and it has.  Things have always gotten better, the sun has always come back out again.  My parents will have been married 50 years next March, and they say the same thing.  In fact, my mother's advice is:

'Marriage is like a sandwich - you get out of it what you put into it'