LIKE ALL GOOD FAIRY TALES… my marriage has a storyline that dips and soars – and quite often flat lines. The hero leaves the toilet seat up, scatters newspaper far and wide and when the golf is on he watches TV as if he were glued to it. Just like a Bachelor.
These actions (and oh so many more) cause the heroine so much grief she can’t believe she married such an imbecile. We’ll save her mood swings, failing eyesight and diminished sex drive for another post.
Less Beauty and more Beastly…The bad can overwhelm the good and make it seem very hard. Which it is.
Marriage is work.
Extenuating circumstances aside, it can require more effort to stay and keep going than to move on.
When you dream of having the bathroom to yourself, or long to read a newspaper that hasn’t been decimated and strewn around the house before you get to it. When you are reduced to being annoyed by the way he even breathes.
Then try to remember what it was like when you met.
The serendipity that brought you together.
Why you thought it might be a great idea to spend your life together.
The moral?
Marriage is sweet and sour. Like this Lemon Almond Cake. The flavours work well together, the trick is getting the mix just right. That takes practice, compromise and care.
The results can be worth it.
I do not have all the answers but I do know the grass is hardly ever greener.
The fallout of a relationship breakdown reverberates for years. I speak with experience; as a child of divorce and an ex-wife – I had a starter marriage twenty years ago that lasted long enough to use the wedding present cutlery once.
If you jump be prepared for the colour on the other side of the fence to be just as faded.
While you take a moment to ponder I will make a suggestion.
Dust off your wedding album and sit somewhere quiet with a cup of tea and a slice of lemon almond cake.
If nothing else you might marvel at your pre baby body and the amount of hair your loved one used to sport. At best? You might take a trip down happy memory lane…and recall that it is for good times and bad.
Make yours a keeper and write your own Fairy tale version.
Lemon Almond Cake
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup Greek yoghurt
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
zest of 3 lemons
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
Method
Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
Grease a square baking tin. Line with baking paper.
Beat the sugar and eggs until light and creamy.
Mix in others ingredients lightly and swiftly.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until the top golden and springy when pressed.
Cool.
Ice generously with lemon icing, or serve plain with greek yoghurt or vanilla ice cream.
* adapted from a recipe in Sunday Life.
Marriage is sweet and sour. Like this Lemon Almond Cake indeed.
