Finding an Actual Home in Your Relationship

When describing our wedding day, neither my husband nor I describe it as the happiest day of our lives because the happiest day was the day we met. There are a plethora of other days that top our wedding day as well....our first date, random moments or random conversation are a few others.

Most of our friends (who are Millennials) tend to refer to us as "relationship goals", but forget the important part of making it to where we are. We have close to two decades of dedication, hard work, trust building, and love behind this. I didn't fall for my husband because he was "cute" or because of his money. As a matter of fact, one of the first things he said to me after we'd run into each other for the third time and I told him that he would be my man, that the next time we run into each other would be because we were meeting for a date, was that he had no money. He was broke, shoulders shrugged awaiting a typical reaction of me recanting on what I'd just said and walking away. On the contrary, my comeback was that I didn't care because I had my own money and that I didn't need his, but he'd better be putting forth some effort to accrue some funds if he wanted this to work. He took my advice and we moved in together three years later, but that's jumping the gun, let's get back to the building of these..."relationship goals." First of all, he's not just my "better half" as the old saying goes, he's my best friend. Remember being a kid and being so excited that the day or weekend was coming that you were going to get to spend with your best friend? Your favorite person in the world? This is how I feel everyday with my husband. We have days where we come home from work, never at the same time, sometimes within an hour or so of each other, and we run to each other and embrace like it's the very last time. We hug like we were forced away from each other for years and now we are finally back together. As a matter of fact, just the other day, he stopped everything he was doing and asked me to come here. I stopped what I was doing, walked over to him and before I could finish asking what was up he was wrapping his arms around me. I hugged him back laughing a little at how passionate this hug was. He simply said in my ear with a little laugh "I'm so glad you're home, I missed you! Today sucked and you are making everything better."

Maybe this all sounds a little too romanticized, but this is our marriage. We eat, drink, and laugh together and it's euphoric. We enjoy each other's intelligence and challenge each others' weird quirks. Of course there are arguments! We don't agree on everything. I'm a bit of a neat freak and he is the absolute opposite. We have some opposing habits that make us grumble at each other every once in a while, but at the end of the day, we're both eager for the argument to be over so we can get back to being the best us. As a matter of fact, let me tell you a story...

When we were a new couple, I was still having trust issues, and he wasn't the greatest at communicating. We would see each other everyday after I got out of school (my first go round in college), but one day I couldn't find him. This happened for about three days. At the time I was 20 and terribly impatient. I'd also taken to treating guys "like they treat us (girls)" so I wandered off to do other...er...things. It was only once and I thought nothing of it when my now hubby reappeared. He'd found a job, and that's why I hadn't seen him. This was before cell phones were easy to get your hands on, so he didn't really have a way of getting in touch with me. At the time, I had a friend who was a bit ditzy and rather chatty. Long story short, she blabbed to him, and we broke up. It was only for a day, but when I tell you that it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest, that's just skimming the surface! I went home and cried all night. I woke up still in tears, my chest heavy. I went to school, went through the motions in my classes and left. Thing is, I didn't go home, I went to our usual meeting spot and there he was, as if the day before had never happened! He looked at me (still feeling all the guilt, I could barely make eye contact) and asked me if I was ready to grab some lunch. I remained silent for most of lunch until he looked at me and he just said, "I know you didn't do this to hurt me, but there is nothing I hate more than cheating...never again." I agreed. I didn't look at it as cheating, I thought he'd moved on. From that point on we have remained us in all of our growing pains. When I met him for the first time, I was a 19-year-old girl strutting around thinking I knew everything. 17, May 2018 makes 18 years later, we're still growing and learning from each other. I couldn't and don't want to see my life any other way.