Has It Been 20 Years Already? |Portrait Photographer

Today, August 14th is my husband and my 20th wedding anniversary! Twenty years is a long time! You don’t even have to tell me. And in case you’re wondering, marrying my husband has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.  When I first met him, I knew there was something special about him. I could feel it. Has that ever happened to you? There was just something about him and it was way beyond anything superficial. I describe it as feeling it in my soul. What “it” was, not really sure but I felt “it”. We started out as friends and co-workers. I think that might be one of the things that helped us to develop our relationship. Is our relationship perfect after 20 years? Oh hell no! That doesn’t mean it’s not working. It just means you can’t create anything perfect with two imperfect people. What works for us may not work for others. Any advice I give is based on common sense and what has worked for us. We’re both happy and still working to continue to grow old together as we raise our son.

So, if you’re new to my blog then you don’t know how this works. Every year for our anniversary, I write a blog on tips I feel are important for a successful marriage/relationship. Technically, this blog is new to a lot of people considering my old blog was with another web host and once I switch, they deleted all of my content. That broke my heart but I guess it was just a reality check to let me know that I can’t hold onto the past. Anyway, per my usual, here are some tips I think help to foster a healthy and satisfying relationship/marriage.

1. Don’t ever expect your partner to make you happy or vice-versa. Happiness is a choice. You must decide to be happy, do what makes you happy and your partner will enhance your happiness.
2. Marriage is not 50/50. Marriage is 100/100. If you’re both giving 100% how can you go wrong?
3. I don’t believe in the saying that marriage makes “two people become one”. I believe that marriage is a partnership. You work together toward a common goal, yet you retain what makes you, you. Which leads into item #4.
4. Do not lose yourself in your marriage. Just because you all (might) share the same last name doesn’t mean that you cease to exist as an individual. You and your spouse should be your own people and from time to time do things without each other. Refill your cup! You cannot pour from an empty cup. Keeping yourself happy and healthy allows you to be a better wife, husband, mother, father, friend, person.
5. Do not enter into a relationship if you are looking for someone to complete you. That is not their job. That is your job. No one should complete you. Why would you ask someone to do all of that work? That’s not fair.
6. Do not enter into a relationship if you are looking for someone to fix you. That’s what therapists are for. No one has time for your bs. Get your act together and then look for love.
7. Learn how to love your partner. In other words, find out what their love language is. You can also ask them what is the best way to love them if you’re direct. I know my primary love language is touch. Both my son and husband will tell you that I need at least one hug a day. Anything extra is a bonus. My secondary love language is acts of service. I like to do nice things for people. My husband’s primary love language is acts of service. He likes for me to do things for him. His secondary love language is gift-giving. He enjoys buying me things he either thinks I want/need or what he thinks I might like.
8. Honesty. Enough said.
9. Compromise. Marriage, or any relationship really, is a give and take. You can’t have a successful relationship if someone is always giving and the other person is always taking. Well, I guess this might work for some people but I would imagine that it would get old after some point. Just my opinion.
10. Take time out for each other. Life gets hectic and that makes it easy to forget about your partner. In order to keep those fires burning, you need to continue to add fresh kindling and rearrange the logs.
11. Remember why you fell in love with them in the first place.
12. Talk about issues. Don’t let them fester. Letting problems fester is will breed resentment like an infection.
13. Do not share your problems with everyone and their brother. If you have someone you can trust and they can remain unbiased that’s one thing. But there are people who will give advice and the advice they give is from a place of hurt and or anger that has nothing to do with you. Sometimes it can even be from a place of jealousy. Just be careful to whom you disclose what.
14. This one might be difficult, but try not to bring up old issues in a new argument just to win points. If it’s relevant, perhaps to show a pattern, maybe. Sometimes people habitually do things that may irk the ness out of you but they don’t realize it because you have never said anything about it before. If that is the case, read item #12 again.
15. Love each other. Have each other’s back. Tell each other when you are wrong and praise each other when you are right.

To be honest, I wanted to provide 20 items since it’s our 20th but darn it, I’m tired. Besides, I think that pretty much covers it. I would tell you what we did for our anniversary, but we won’t be celebrating it until next week. He couldn’t get this week off. Ah well…better late than never. Perhaps I’ll tell you the week after next. Anyway, I do hope these items have been helpful. Again, these are things that I’ve learned over my 20 years of marriage. I do believe that I am a different person than he married but he still loves me. I guess he’s changed a bit too and yes, I still love him. Love means being flexible but you should never bend someone so much that they break. I think at that point, depending on what caused them to break, it is no longer love. Death and sickness do not count in this scenario.

So, if you have tips you’d like to add, I would love to read them! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you’ll be back for more! One last thing, yes, that is a rather old picture of us from 2007. You can see our son in the background. He was 2 years old then. Just think about the cobbler’s shoes and you’ll understand. (le sigh).