Cheers to 10 years of marriage. Sharing a q&a that might explain how we got this far.
Today marks 10 years since the fella and I got married. On this day, on a chilly Thursday evening in October, Kevin and I exchanged vowels and became Mr. and Mrs. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been married for that long. We were the first of our friends to tie the knot so we had no one to turn to when we had questions, it was all on us. But here we are, 10 years later, happily married.
However, those years didn’t come without their difficulties. Oh man, there were so many hard days, weeks, months, and years. Not to mention, on our first few years of marriage we lived in Arizona, across the country from everything and everyone we knew and loved. Then came the kids, and if you’re a parent you know that kids don’t come without their own set of difficulties. These 10 years have been happy, yes, but also very, very hard.
For today’s post, I thought I’d share some questions I’ve gotten from readers throughout the years about my marriage – how Kevin and I met, our lives as parents, etc. I’m obviously not a marriage or relationship expert of any sort, but I thought it would be fun to share my experience.
On How We Met
I both hate and love telling the story about how Kevin and I met. Long story short – I was that girl. I was the girl that dated her best friends ex-boyfriend. There’s really no excuse, but I like to think that when you know, you know.
I was basically the third wheel in the relationship between my college roommate and Kevin. I joined them on so many of their dates, I slept over when she stayed the night at his house, it’s funny to think how annoying I must have been. But I genuinely liked Kevin as a friend, he was funny, nice, and treated my friend great! When they broke up, I let me friend know that I’d be staying friends with him because I legitimately valued his friendship.
Well you basically know what happened after that. He and I continued to hang out, without my friend, and I soon realized I liked him as more than just a friend. I then learned that Kevin felt the same way. We both let my friend know, separately, how we felt about each other. Y’all, it did not go over well. There was a bit of a fallout and all of my girlfriends kinda hated me for what I’d done, which I don’t blame them for.
It was time to move into my on-campus housing…with my best friend. Kevin and I had just started dated and my friend and I had squashed our beef, life was great. Or so I thought. Move-in day came and it was so awkward, especially because Kevin was helping me move in. I had to head to a class or orientation of some sort so I told Kevin to wait in my room and I’d be back. My friend was not happy about this and we just started screaming at each other. It was the first time we ever yelled at each other like that, it was brutal. I left and left Kevin and my friend in our apartment. When I got back, everything was fine. Somehow my friend and I got passed everything and life went back to normal. It was so weird but our friendship was strong enough to withstand a boy.
Years later, she and I are still best friends. She was in my wedding, I was in hers. We still talk at least once a week.
On Getting Married Young
For our generation, i.e. millennials, getting married at 25 was young. We didn’t think we were young at the time, but I look back now and dude, that’s young! We still had a lot of growing to do, especially individually, but we managed it.
A few weeks after we got married, we moved to Arizona for Kevin’s job. That move took us across the country from everyone and everything we knew. Sure, we could have called our loved ones but that different from going out and blowing off some steam. We spent our first few years of marriage somewhat cut-off from friends and family, and honestly, I think that was for the best. We had to really rely on each other for everything. I like to look back at that time as our bubble of marriage – it was us against the world!
On Being Parents
Raising children is definitely our biggest and hardest adventure to date. That first year after Remy was born was brutal. We were over-exhausted, we didn’t have built-in help because we lived across the country, and again, we were the first of our friends to hit this milestone so asking for advice wasn’t possible. It was a lot of trial by fire which is basically the definition of parenting.
By the time Theo was born we had moved back east so a lot of things go easier, but it was also so hard in different ways. Soon after Theo, we moved in with Kevin’s parents to save money and we stayed for two years before we moved back into our townhome. In our times as parents, we’ve had to make a lot of decisions like this for the betterment of our family, and we continue to do so still. I assume this is something that we’ll be doing for the rest of our lives, but it doesn’t mean those decisions are difficult.
In parenting, every day presents a new adventure, a new challenge. With each, as parents, we’re learning to touch base in order to know how to move forward as a family. Sometimes we agree with what needs to happen and sometimes we don’t, it’s in those disagreements that the difficulties lie. Add the personalities of two tiny humans, and there you have parenting.
On The Difficulties of Marriage
Where do I start? For us, the most obvious reply and our biggest struggle is our communication. Kevin and I are horrible communicators individually, and as a couple even worse. Something we’re constantly learning is that we need to try, with all our might, to get on the same page. However, it’s inevitable for miscommunication to happen. We’ve been together for 13+ years and I know this is something we’re going to have to continuously work on. It won’t be easy but marriage isn’t easy, and that’s okay. Just because something isn’t easy though, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. Here’s to many more years of marriage!
You can catch our 8 year wedding anniversary q&a here.
