I have been married for 10 years as of today.  That is more than 1/3rd of my life.  No joke.  I’m 30-years-old at the end of this year, but not yet.  So my math holds tight.

Way back, before Luke was born, when Pat and I were separated and he had just moved out with our son, my mom told me she didn’t think we’d last.  Pat was a nice guy but…

Thank you, mother, for driving me back to my husband with a determination to make things work, better than anything else could have.

Even now, 6-7 years later, when we go through rocky periods, I reflect back on that moment with my mom, and really all the odds out there, which are not in our favor, and my sheer bullheadedness kicks in and I’ll be damned if I’m going to fall to a statistic.  I enjoy beating odds.

And yes, we have rocky periods.  Sometimes they last days or hours, other times they last months.  I think that’s normal.

Marriage is work whether it’s in year one or year fifty.  Marriage is a lot of work.  It takes effort, patience and in my case, bullheadedness.  And sometimes things aren’t perfect.

But other times things are exactly how Nicholas Sparks would lead you to believe.

Then the rest of the time things aren’t over the moon, but they aren’t in a swamp either, and we can go through the day-to-day married to our best friend, raising our kids, and just enjoying a state of low to no drama, and general contentment.

That, my friends, is a healthy marriage.  The highs, the lows, and the sweet, normal, between.

Happy anniversary, my love.  You are my best friend and my first real love that doesn’t involve the color white and a pedestal.  So with that in mind, I promise not to lose my bullheadedness anytime soon.

(Edit in response to Pat’s response (Really?!?!?) to me singing love songs while writing this: “I’m writing our anniversary post!  It goes live Wednesday at 1oAM  and if you don’t read it, I’ll take back everything I said in it!”)

(Second Edit: Wow, I linked to some crappy times up there.  So I think I should link to where I realized how much Pat loves me. And why our marriage works so well.  Why I love him.  And how he became my hero.  Oh, and he held true to his promise about The Bloggess, though my mom and sister took me, he stayed with the kids making it all possible.)

I’m damn lucky.