Marriage

My wedding anniversary is this Sunday. June 20th. I will have been married . . .

. . . 15 years.

Fifteen years. Never thought I'd say I'd done anything for 15 years. Just like I never could imagine myself saying something like, "15 years ago . . . ." Well, 15 years ago, I got married and have been with the same woman since then.

Here's where I start to sound like an old man. It's had its ups and downs. We've yelled and screamed at each other. We've been to marriage counselling together. Moved around together, lived in ratty apartments together, drove junky cars together, the works. More recently, we've bought a condo and a house together, lived in nice accommodations, mid- middle-class, drive decent cars which have no problems getting us from A to B. In the last 8 years or so, we've had a great life together.

The nice thing is, it seems to keep getting better and better. Sex gets progressively better, our conversations are more meaningful, we fall more in love with each other every day, and more and more we both forget what life was like before marriage.

We never had kids. My wife, regrettably, was unable to have children. And yet, looking back, we are actually glad we didn't. We think it would have been good in our lives and we would have truly loved kids in our home. Retrospectively, however, we feel very satisfied with our lives and with the things we're able to do simply because we don't have children in our home. It sounds materialistic, however, were we to be presented with the opportunity or responsibility of children at this point, we would take it on with no hesitation whatsoever. But we no longer seek children and we no longer regret the absence of children in our home.

Our marriage is a huge success. It's something we worked on and that effort is paying off in very large dividends.

Best of all, as I mentioned above, we're still in love. We fall more in love with each other every day. Her heart and mine are so entwined, we can't separate them any longer. We have mutual respect and admiration for each other and we treat each other as if we were the most important people in the universe.

We draw closer and closer every moment. Neither of us can wait 'til we see each other at the end of the day and if we had our preferences, we'd be together 24 hours a day. And never regret a moment of any of it. If I could go back, would I change anything, knowing what I know now? Absolutely. But the difference would be that we would have reached this pure elation many years ago instead of it taking as long as it did.

This is where we wish to be and how we wish to be. Nothing is more important to us than our life together and we really expect to keep making the most of it day by day.

The rose of our life is the sweetest of them all.

--Wag--