I’ve been married for three years…here’s what it feels like

Today is my three year wedding anniversary with Nate! I write one of these blog posts every year (read year two and year one), and I always type it out and publish it before going back to re-read what I wrote the previous year. My goal is to make it as candid as possible so I can truly speak from the heart about my current experience of being married. 

Three years ago on this date, March 25, Nate and I stood in front of a group of about 80 of our closest friends and family and told them all that we were going to be partners for life, through the thick and thin, always having each other’s back. We told them that we’d be always love each other. And now, in our third year of marriage with a 5-month-old baby boy in our lives and a COVID-19 quarantine forcing us to spend every single moment together in our house, I’m learning more and more what “love” really means. 😉 

Gosh, I love this man so much. Here’s what three years of marriage feels like: 

Our third year marriage felt very different than the first two. I think that’s mostly due to the fact that I got pregnant just before our second anniversary, so the third year was the Baby Year. It was full of ultrasounds and pregnancy-related conversations and swollen ankles, followed by this life-changing day at the hospital, and then some extreme sleep-deprivation plus ALL the baby love. Seriously. We have baby fever. Every night before we fall asleep, we scroll through photos and videos of Milo and say “wait, so we must have gotten the best and cutest and most wonderful baby in the whole world, right?” Haha. I’m pretty sure every parent does this. 

Also see: I’ve been married for a year…here’s what it feels like

We have so much fun together. Nate is my best friend, and he’ll say the same thing about me. We just have so much fun together! I think back to the first 6 months of dating, and how fun it was to have all of those electric sparks flying, but I wouldn’t wish that back over what we have now. Our relationship is SO much fun right now, because we know each other better than anyone else in the world. We’re getting to the point where we can guess what the other one is feeling without having to say anything. It’s pretty magical to be having a bad day, and try to hide it, and then have Nate say, “hey, I know something’s off with you, and you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m here for you whenever you’re ready.” 

We talk about poop and spit-up a lot in our third year of marriage. Just saying… I didn’t know that two people could have so many conversations about poop. 

Love has changed this year. The first two years felt like the honeymoon stage. Love was the movie version of love: anniversary flowers, cozy dates to cocktail bars, big birthday presents, long letters. It was all SO much fun. Year three was a practical love: going through pregnancy, which transformed my body again and again, so that we could have a son. Pregnancy was something we both wanted, but it was a sacrifice on my part, nonetheless. For Nate, it was giving me back massages and foot massages and listening to me cry and vent when things got so painful. He was so loving during that pregnancy. And once Milo came into our lives, love has been late-night dinners consumed snuggled up on the couch, too weary for much conversation other than commentating an episode of Schitt’s Creek and sharing a few laughs. Love has meant one of us taking Milo out on a 2-hour walk in the stroller so the other can sleep in on a Saturday morning. Love has been so real in year three. I can literally reach out and touch it. In that sense, showing and receiving love is easier than ever because there are never-ending ways that we both need it these days. 

I appreciate our foundation more than ever. We had 5-and-a-half years together before Milo was born, and now, more than ever, I’m thankful for those vacations and date nights and regular lazy weekends at home. I love that we built a foundation of trust and knowingness. I LOVE going back through our baby-free vacations like this trip to London or our honeymoon to Spain, or this anniversary trip to NYC and feeling so much happiness! All of the late-night talks, whether fun or really hard, have built a thick layer of confidence in our relationship.

^ I snapped this selfie on our first post-baby date night. We went to Hestia while my sister stayed home with Milo.

For the first time, I’m starting to grasp how long this marriage game is going to be… Haha, and I mean that in a good way! The beginning is such a whirlwind of dating, anticipation of the proposal, and then all of the madness associated with planning a wedding. Then it’s instantly all about honeymooning and buying a house and sending out our first Christmas card and then getting pregnant and having a baby. It all goes by SO fast! But now that life has leveled out a bit and some of the craziness of those first few years is over, I’m realizing what a longterm game this really is. It feels like we’ve spent so much life together, but we’re only three years in and, as long as our health holds up and we avoid any unforeseen tragedies, we still have another 40-50 years together. DANG. So, in that sense….

…I’m starting to realize how worthwhile it is to invest in my relationship. Nate is my person, and he’s going to be here in my life for the long haul. Our marriage is strong right now, and I want to keep it that way. I am totally willing to do all of the things that will help our relationship in the future, whether that’s marriage counseling, creating a mandatory date night, or just working on ourselves in order to help the relationship. In the first two years, those things weren’t even a blip in my mind. In my third year of marriage I realized that spending a LIFETIME with one person (and making sure that it’s happy and fun, haha) is going to take some work. And it will be 100% worth it, but it’s definitely going to take some work. 

Also see: I’ve been married for two years…here’s what it feels like

I feel like I won the quarantine lottery. We certainly didn’t anticipate spending our anniversary cooped up in our house together. We actually had an epic dinner date planned in London, but that obviously didn’t happen the way we anticipated. So we’re going to put Milo to bed, dress up, and order in from one of our favorite Austin restaurants (this one!) and enjoy the food at our dining room table. I’m also hoping to open up the bar cart and make some cocktails! It’s a totally different anniversary experience than expected, but the change is keepin’ life spicy. 😉 

We’re kicking off our fourth year of marriage by staying inside our house to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19. Life is full of surprises, and I like it that way. I’m so curious to see what this next year of marriage has in store! 

PS: this was our fun little south Austin wedding