I can’t believe that I am celebrating 20 years of marriage. It has been a lot of hard work to stay married this long, and it has also been pretty dam wonderful.
I often see posts in my Facebook feed people who proclaim they are lucky to have married their best friend. I did not marry my best friend. I married the love of my life.
Image may be NSFW.
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Thank you Amanda Naylor Photography for this picture of me and the love of my life.
Our relationship has very similar qualities I share in my relationships with my best friends, but he is my husband not my best friend (kind of like I am not your best friend I am your mom mindset that I have with my kids.) I think our partnership is a good one, but it does not serve the same purpose as my best friends.
With my best friends, I share a history. A history made up of surviving high school and college, dating and heartbreak, road trips and late night phone calls. I continue to make new friends that I don’t share the same history, but we still have our adventures and inside jokes and support for each other. My best friends- old and new- are the ones that call bullshit on me. They get pedicures with me. We talk about girl stuff like being a mom and a wife, and who you’d leave your husband for in your fantasy life . . . Ryan Reynolds I am patiently waiting for you. They let me be myself because you can’t always be yourself in the real world. We complain about our husbands (and in some instances ex-husbands) and our children without the need to fix something because sometimes we just need to vent (outside of social media). And, they understand that we are all busy and we don’t have the energy for those late night phone calls right now. I know that if I needed them, I could call them and they’d be there for me no questions asked in a way that a friend would be there for you (because they know if I am asking for help that I honestly and truly need it.)
I love my husband unlike I love my best friends. We’ve experience a mutual growth through some significant life changes that I also share with my best friends, but in a totally different way. And, my husband and my best friends have navigated me through those changes in their own way. I feel so lucky that I have all of them in my life- my husband and my best friends.
