OK that’s kinda true. My husband doesn’t fight. He just walks outside and has a cigarette while I blow off steam.

Today we are married 18 years. Wow. That’s a long time. (our “other” anniversary…is 2/11/85…so we will be dating 25 years in February) Double Wow.

Someone asked me the other day what my secret is. Secret? I don’t think we have one. I think we both knew from the beginning that we would end up being together. We have always just fit. We go together. We compliment each other. What one lacks the other makes up for. He is like marshmallow. I am like hot sauce. If we were both one or the other I don’t think we would have made it this far. Our lives are forever intertwined. The lines between “his” family and “my” family are blurred. His cousins are my cousins. My aunts are his aunts. We pretty much grew up in each other’s houses so our four parents belong to both of us. We have spectacular role models in our parents that attest to what “in good times or in bad” means.

While not every day is hearts and roses, we muddle through. We have days that are mundane filled with making dinner, going to work, driving kids here and there and helping with homework. They are punctuated with days that are milestones like our first born’s Sweet 16. Or days that are filled with sadness like the loss of someone in “our” family.

We are each other’s “home”, our soft place to fall. We know what to do to get the other’s goat if we are in that kind of mood. We can crack each other up like no one else can. I suppose it just comes easy to us. It’s what we know for sure. I know we are tremendously lucky, although I may take that for granted some days.

There’s always respect, even in the heat of a moment. Always. Even if we feel like throwing something. Always respect.

Sometimes we know exactly what the other one needs. Sometimes we make it up as we go along. So it’s not perfect, no marriage is. But it seems to be working for us. Happy Anniversary TP.

Jenn's two cents: Happy Anniversary to my favorite couple!