💍In all honesty, I wasn’t sure we’d last…🥂

And what does that mean, anyway? 

Last a lifetime? A Decade? Quarter of a century?

What length of time constitutes a good run among intimate partners?

I suppose the term last, for me, is defined more by quality than by quantity. 

I never wanted to be one of those grin-and-bear-it ladies. Not when it comes to marriage. Hell, even if I wanted to be, anyone who’s known me for five minutes would predict that I couldn’t tolerate the intolerable.

Thinking back to the beginning, I remember the celebrities who got together when we did: Katie and Tom. Angelina and Brad. Ellen and Portia. 

In my mind, we were all teammates fighting to beat the odds. To live the fairytale. To be the exception. 

There was nothing exceptional about my relationship struggles over the last decade. 

They were painfully ordinary. Worse, actually, because we are ‘relationship experts.’

Steph and I are supposed to be above disagreements, bickering, and the bullshit that plagues normal folks. 

Except we weren’t. Aren’t.

There were moments – especially early on – when we were drowning. When I wouldn’t have dared wager a bet on our ability to last beyond the silence that choked us to sleep at night. 

Looking back over the 3,650 days since our wedding, the thing I attribute our longevity to boils down to a single concept: Work.  

Work is different from commitment. Commitment involves tolerating the intolerable. Work involves moving through the intolerable to get to the promised land. 

Which is not to say that we’ve ‘arrived.’

But it is to say that we continue to fight for our relationship. For each other. For our fake kid. And also for you. 

It hasn’t just been about the two of us for a long time. We know people look to us for a pathway. And we don’t take that responsibility lightly. In fact, there are times when that burden fuels our ability to do the seemingly impossible. 

Sometimes we can do for you what we can’t do for ourselves. 

You inspire us to be better. To do better. To try harder. To look for solutions when none are apparent. 

And so, this post is something of a love letter. To You.

For giving us a reason to work harder than we sometimes want to. 

And for being the village that has supported us for 10 years.