Today, Patrick and I celebrate TEN years of being together. Ugh, writing that sentence gives me all the feels and also makes me feel old. It also makes me think, Ten years? A decade?! Where the hell did that go? I feel like so much has happened, and yet it seems like it can’t be that long since we were living in Boulder. We were just taking the bus to Rockies games and drinking Moscow mules in copper cups at one of our favorite places in Denver, right? Or it wasn’t that long since we ate cheese curds and drank beers out of glass boots in Madison? And we haven’t been living back home in Santa Barbara that long. Just a couple of yea…what’s that? Coming up on five and a half years?! Okay, Father Time, I think you can take it easy for a bit.
If you meet your significant other at a young age, it can be challenging. I was twenty-one when Patrick and I started dating. That seems so young now. I remember when people thought it was strange that I wasn’t dating around still or having lots of early-twenties flings. As the old saying goes, when you know, you know though. I also completely understand that if I have a daughter one day and she says she’s going to marry the guy she’s dating at twenty-one that I will probably gently say, “Of course you will, Sweetheart,” while placing my bets on a breakup. The truth is that a lot happens in a decade, and a lot changes from your twenties to your thirties. When you go through highs and lows, major life changes, moves, new jobs, etc. you can grow apart or grow together.
The fantastic part of meeting someone when you are young is that you get to share a lot of milestones together. You get to see your significant other try new paths, fail, succeed, grow as a person, and become who they really are meant to be. Patrick and I have witnessed each other at so many different life stages – my wardrobe has also really changed from sorority t-shirts and Juicy Couture boots for starters. We’ve also been able to spend so much time together traveling all over the world, attending friends’ weddings, and seeing our favorite bands (something we both greatly miss).
For a very over-simplified rundown of our past decade, I will list major events:
I graduated college, I started flipping houses and managing my own rentals, I moved from Boulder to Denver, Patrick defended his dissertation and earned his PhD, Patrick moved in with me in Denver, We moved to Madison, WI for Patrick’s job, we moved within Madison, Patrick was hit by a car while riding his bicycle, Patrick got a job in Santa Barbara, we moved back to Santa Barbara, we got engaged, we got married, we rescued two cats, we moved again within Santa Barbara, and here we are. In case you’re trying to do the math, we’ve moved six times in the past decade and two have been major cross-country moves. We’ve also now lived in multiple houses during full remodels (you save money but it’s awful). We can’t even mention the word “move” at this point without seeing dollar bills grow wings and fly away, a sea of endless odd-sized cardboard boxes, and household items that seem to multiply like gerbils.
People always talk about the secrets of a happy relationship or marriage, and while I don’t believe that there is one magic answer or a one-size-fits-all approach, I do chalk up a lot of success to one thing. Drumroll please….alcohol! Oh wait, so sorry, I mean humor! (See what I did there?). From moments of intense furniture-assembly frustration to two cats having the major runs all over our house to medical scares to job stresses, we can laugh our way through anything. Even in the darkest, most uncertain moments, we can laugh at ourselves and/or the situation. Hey, if it worked for Seinfeld, it can work for us.
When you walk into a hospital room after your boyfriend has been hit by a car and you start crying because you don’t know if everything is going to be okay, and he responds, “Why are you crying? You’re not the one that got hit by a car.” And then you laugh because he has to wear a big-plastic-neck cone like a dog, so you take photos as mementos/blackmail…that’s true love right there. Or when you ask your husband to take the made-from-scratch cheesecake out of the oven, and in doing so, he drops the cheesecake face down? Or when you discover at midnight that you actually don’t have a flight booked for 5 a.m. and have to spend the next three hours on the phone with United. Or when you are lost in a foreign country, exhausted, cranky, and hot, and you keep walking back and forth on the same streets hoping that you’ve finally found the right direction.
Of course I’m grateful for the lovey-dovey moments and the times that have gone off without a hitch, but I also enjoy looking back on the messy moments. The moments where we have been weary and crabby and eyeroll-y, because they end up being hilarious. One of us, try as we might to be stone-cold-serious, always breaks, and later we can giggle about the smushed cake, the scheduling error, and the horrible sense of direction.
It’s been ten years of growing together, laughing, and navigating life as a team. It hasn’t always been easy, planned, glamorous, or graceful, but it’s sure been fun, loving, exciting, and amusing. Looking forward to many more years, face-palm moments, and times of, “I know you’re mad now, but I think you’ll really laugh about this later…” As Marilyn Monroe said, “If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
Thankfully, I love my husband at his worst, his best, and everything in between, and I believe he would say the same about me. He would also say, “Why did you ever think it was a good idea for me to take the cheesecake out of the oven?” You live and learn people, and hopefully you also laugh a lot along the way too.
