My husband and I celebrated our fourth anniversary last week. While this is no big milestone, like passing the 7-year itch phase or hitting 25 years, for me, it feels like a major anniversary.
When we first got married, I moved in straight from my parent's house, where I lived after graduating college. I had never lived on my own, managed tons of major bills, bought my own groceries, etc. My husband had done all of these things, but quite frankly, not that well - he usually paid bills when the pink slips hit! Our first year of marriage was quite a rollercoaster. It was blissfully awesome to live together and do fun things, go out to eat, set up house, and all of those fun, new experiences of owning a home and being newlyweds. We found out - SURPRISE - we were expecting only three months into marriage, and were overwhelmed with joy and with our families joy! Of course that meant there were plenty of hormones my husband had to contend with that first year. And then there were the fights. In our first two years of marriage we had some real knock-down (not literally), drag out fights where we yelled and cursed and threw things (not at each other!) and slammed doors. Eventually one or the other would come crawling over to apologize and life would be good, but the fights were ugly. I can even remember at least one, if not two or three fights, where we threw out the "D" word! Then, as my daughter was turning a year old and we were approaching our second anniversary, we found out - SURPRISE! - we were pregnant again. Both pregnancies were welcome and exciting events! When baby number two joined her toddling older sister, life became crazy busy; in sometimes stressful, but mostly awesome ways. There is no way to prepare for the jump from one to two kids, it was certainly (at least for me) more life changing than the jump from zero to one kids!
Maybe this is some relationships downfall - you have more kids, you grow apart, they get older, and you are left with nothing. But, I am blessed to be able to say this is not true for my husband and me. In the last two years, we have grown closer than I ever thought possible. We have so much more respect for each other, our roles, and our contributions than we did before. I think all of those huge fights allowed us to better our communication. The fact that we were each willing to apologize (him, more so than me - something I am still working on today), gave us the trust to know that we would always be there for each other. I can honestly say I cannot remember the last fight we had. Every single day I feel 100% content in my life and I feel secure in my husband's love in every way. I used to look back on our first year of marriage with happiness, but also some discomfort; now, I look back on those first two years fondly, not just for all the fun, but also for all the bad times that brought us closer together and made us the couple we are today. I cannot wait to see what happens next!
So, happy anniversary, Jon! I love you - forever and always :)
Thanks for listening!
~Erin
