I used to enjoy watching Transformers. The characters would transform into robots; they had accessories, jets and cool weaponry. Then they would turn back into cars—simple, efficient, sometimes luxury, transportation.

The show could have been a metaphor for marriage.

1/13

At the press of a button, you will be required to transform from role to role.

One day you are a driver, then you are a chef, another day you're a therapist, then next you become a secretary, masseuse, security guard, the list is endless.

2/13

You will have to learn skills you have never been taught, then teach yourself long lost arts, you never heard of before.

No-one warned you that roleplay did not end in the bedroom. Everyone talks about learning and communications, but very few people talk about change.

3/13

How marriage will alter your DNA, restructure your biology, and turn you inside out. It will change you.

It used to piss me off when people would say that I have changed since I got in a relationship. It's never good when your people accuse you of switching upon them.

4/13

You are supposed to keep it real.

Keeping it real comes with the pressure and expectations of others. I believe that any involuntary change — especially when a woman caused it — was a bad thing.
It was my instinct to reject the change.

5/13

Every time, I had to make an unfamiliar decision, I would reassess my “realness” quota. Decisions were not based on my situation, but instead, the insecurities I had carried over from a previous life. So my relationship became an example of trying to replant new seeds in old soil

Let me set the record straight; keeping it real is not a mission to be the same person your entire life. Realness is about authenticity, but that definition doesn't change in a relationship; it matures. It is understanding what you want to share with another person.

Maturity is chewing on the bitter pieces of pride and taking a front-row seat at the screenings of your flaws. It's naive to expect to see the same version of who you were when you look into the mirror after that work. You don't keep it real by rebelling against maturity & growth

Marriage will change you — any meaningful relationship will — change does not have to be a bad thing. When two people, two different worlds come together, change is inevitable. You can't travel across an equator without adjusting to the time zone.

9/13

Marriage tests the person you are, to the point where you feel like it might break you, but it also teaches you how flexible you are.
Change was painful; it was arguments and nights in bed facing the wall instead of my wife. It was the urge to see if the grass was greener alone.

Until I realised that it wasn't like others claimed, a woman who was changing me, we were changing each other. That change wasn't abandoning my past; it was trading my present for our future.

11/13

It wasn't about losing who I was; it was an opportunity to learn about who I could become, with the support of another person.
Sometimes, change will be like walking through fire, but you will emerge from the ashes stronger.

12/13

Sometimes it takes more than a 30 day fast to be reborn; it takes years to adapt and evolve.

I grew up boasting to my boys that I would never let a woman change me. Back then, I was a child afraid of change; now, I am an adult who knows I must learn to embrace it.

13/13