The State of my Marriage

As you all know, this blog is called Mommy Musings.  And while I sometimes blog about myself, or some sponsored posts, I mainly talk about my girls and being a mom.  That's why I started this blog afterall.

But today I'm going to take a break from all the mommy-ness and talk about my husband, my Skip.  We've been together for ten years now, married for eight.  I knew he was something very special the moment I met him.  Our attraction towards each other was immediate, and after one night of meeting, we belonged only to each other.  So our feelings, our desire to be together, that was the easy part.  But it's not to say that our relationship has been easy.  In the past decade we have dealt with long distance, the police academy, activation and a deployment, buying a dog, buying a condo, losing a friend, a few jobs for me, weird cop hours, a few cars, selling a condo, buying a house, two pregnancies, two beautiful baby girls, hard career decisions, buying another dog, being a one-income family, losing a dog, losing his aunt, losing his mother, losing my grandmother, and all the little stuff in between.  And the only way we have survived it all is together.

It's easy to get caught up in the every day nuances of our life...two kids...school..ballet...family..work schedules..money issues.  It's easy for Skip and I to take the other person for granted, to blame them if something goes wrong, to take things out on each other.  Those are all easy to do. 

What's not easy to do all the time is to remember the person we fell in love with.  To remember who we were before we had the pressure of kids and a mortgage.  It takes commitment, it takes work.  And while there are lots of days that Skip and I fail, lots of days we fight and don't like each other all that much, those days are thankfully not the majority. 

Skip and I may a pledge on July 29, 2005 to love each other, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.  Those aren't just words or grand ideas, those are thing that we chose to do every single day.

One of the most important things that Skip and I do for each other is making time together, and giving the other person time to themselves.  Both of these things make us better people, and a better couple. 

Most days we try to give each other a little time to workout, go out with friends, run some solo-errands, get a little sleep.  It helps us become a little more refreshed, and better parents, better spouses. 

We also make it a priority to spend as much time together as we can.  We don't stress out of the house date nights too much.  They are awesome, don't get me wrong, I'll take as many as we can get, but we don't just focus on them.  Daily time together is more important to us.  Sometimes it's only for a little bit of time, but we take what we can get.  I may be ridiculously overtired all the time, but I always wait up for Skip when he works the late shift.  We both need that time to unwind and fill each other in on our day. 

When Skip's home at night, we love to have friends over and entertain.  We also love to snuggle up on the couch and watch tv or a movie we never got to see in theaters. 

Some free nights, or during naptime, we sit and just talk.  About what we're feeling, going through, or worried about.  We talk politics and current events.  Skip tells me stories about things that have happened in history.  We plan things for the future.  These are some of my most favorite moments.

So while there are moments that we're not perfect, moments we wish we could change....overall our marriage is strong, thriving.  I can't believe how much more I love Skip than when we first got married.  He truly is my better half, the only one I want to go through this life with.  After all, he is the only family I chose.  We're ten years into our life together and I cannot wait to see what the rest holds.