My wife and I have been married just under two years. We met in High School though we didn’t date at that point because she was a freshman when I was a senior. I spent a couple years as a Latter-Day Saint missionary and then when I came home, realized how beautiful and bright she was. In reality, she was always those things, but I’ve never been one to claim that High School Seniors were geniuses. We’re both in college, I’m studying Theater and Mandarin Chinese, and she’s studying Dance.

How Our Marriage Works

My wife and I this past week reflected on a few things we do well:

The first is that we really like to go places together. I worked 9pm-8am the first year we were married and she didn’t like going places without me, so we always shopped for groceries and did other things together. We read in the car, and talk and just enjoy each other’s company, but we do so as we drive places together.

Secondly, we play games nearly every day. Mostly it’s card games but we’ll play 5-10 hands of UNO and a little of this or that. I’ve slowly sucked her into video games through guitar hero and Mario Kart. We probably don’t get as much done as we could, but we love to play.

Third, is that we make the tough calls together. When our car died, we decided what we could spend and got something we both liked, but hadn’t planned on (A small SUV rather than a car). When we bought a second car, it was something we test drove together. We recently had to cut back on our budget and it’s been good for her to help me eat out less, and me to help her with similar frivolous things.

These may not seem huge, but the most important thing is we view one another as teammates, and we work well together. We have set boundaries about what we do alone, or what we can do without telling our spouse, simply to keep lines of communication open. That’s not to say we don’t have alone time or that we report on every thing; but many things we do talk about help us to make the small choices good choices more often.

That’s how we keep it fresh, The Savages

P.S. We’re going to have a baby. :)

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