Ten years ago today, I wrote this post.
As many of my posts do, it used many words to say one simple thing:
In the end, all I can say is that I’m so deeply, deeply lucky to have found you, Erin.
Twenty years ago today, Erin and I decided to become boyfriend and girlfriend. I would tell you that I asked her; she would tell you she asked me. Given my horrible memory, she’s surely right, but I kinda like that a definitive answer is lost to time. I’ve retconned it to be that we just made the decision together.
Together. Which we’ve been — as of today — for twenty years.
Erin said to me recently that people are often a part of a season of your life. A great example of this is coworkers; you may be close while you work together, but once one of you leaves, and you’re no longer speaking every weekday, friendship often tends to leave as well.
It’s a different season.
To make it twenty years with anyone — even family — is an immense accomplishment. It requires choosing each other often. In a romantic relationship, it requires choosing each other every time. Even if you don’t particularly want to, at that particular moment. When it’s easy, but also when it’s hard. Especially when it is hard.
What’s been so great about spending twenty years with Erin is that it is very rarely hard. Well, for me anyway. 🫣
Our twenty year wedding anniversary isn’t until a couple summers from now. To many couples, that is the anniversary that matters most. To me, while our wedding was immensely important, it was a formal codification of something we already knew. Something we had known for two and a half years: we are each other’s person.
We’ve known that since 2005. Since the sixteenth of January, to be exact.
Here’s to twenty years, Erin. To merging two lives into one. To bringing two all-new lives into the world. To trying, every day. To the [overwhelming majority of] times where it doesn’t feel like trying at all. To choosing each other… every day.
I love you. Happy anniversary. 🥰
