Today is our 12th wedding anniversary.  We agreed long ago, I’m pretty sure it was by our 2nd anniversary, that we would not buy each other gifts or cards for our anniversary.  We do celebrate it.  The same way every year.   We go to dinner in the restaurant at the country club where we had our wedding reception.  This may sound boring to some but I love traditions.  This is one of my favorites.

I’m assuming that hubby agreed to the no gift/card rule for the same reasons I did, but I don’t know that for sure.  See, I don’t like obligatory gift giving and cards.  Each year on this day, we would each feel obligated to purchase some sort of gift and some sappy card, no matter what.  That just seems insincere to me.  I much prefer when hubby is out in the world and sees something he knows I will like and picks it up for me.  I prefer that I hear “I love you” or something from him about how happy he is to be married to me on any other day, when it’s spontaneous and comes from the heart.

There is also a huge difference between getting married (the wedding) and being married (life).  Anniversaries celebrate the wedding day, and that’s a great thing to celebrate.  Having said that, it’s even more important to celebrate the marriage, flaws and all, that we have worked damn hard at making a good one.

July 19, 1997

Yes, the wedding was beautiful and the reception was a blast.  After that, it was just…life.  There is no fairy tale and there is no happily ever after.  I can say that today, we are happier and closer and in a much better place than we ever have been before.  We aren’t perfect but no one ever is.  We have fun together, he’s a great dad, we can usually communicate well, the sex is still amazing, we have learned a lot about ourselves and each other over the past year, and I love where we are today.

That scares the crap out of me.  As has been well documented on this blog, I spent the majority of our first 10 years of marriage busily ignoring, avoiding and denying all of my own thoughts, emotions, wants and needs.  I did whatever I thought I needed to do to avoid conflict and I now realize, only had one foot in the door.  One foot was always out.  I always had, in the back of my head, the idea that divorce was always an option.  I constantly vacillated between wanting to stay and wanting to go.  I held grudges and built up a ton of resentment.  All of that is gone now.  I am a different person. I actually like this guy and don’t have one foot out the door.

Why does that scare me?  Because I have more to lose now.  With one foot out the door, if he did something I didn’t like, or chose to leave himself, I was already halfway there so it wouldn’t have been as painful.  Now that I’m all-in, it will be excruciatingly painful if anything occurs that causes a major rift between us.  Intimacy issues?  No, not this girl! 

I’m happy we’ve made it to 12.  I’m happy we’re going out for our traditional dinner.  I’m happy he’s still sexy as hell and that for some strange reason (love truly is blind), he still thinks I am too.  Despite my fears, I’m happy that for the first time in my life, I’m actually living it. And I’m proud of us.

Thanks for stopping by!