7 Things I’ve Learned During Our Second Year of Marriage

Today, John and I celebrate two years of marriage. Two awesomely wonderfully magnificent years of marriage. And I keep learning more and more about us and myself. Last year, I wrote about what I learned during the first six months of being a military spouse and our first full year of marriage. I figured I’d keep the trend going. Here’s what I’ve learned during year two:

Time really does go fast

Everyone says it when you get married: “You’ll turn around and be celebrating your 50th!” And it’s kind of true. Two years of (almost always) wedded bliss have passed. And it honest-to-goodness feels like it’s only been a year… at most. I can imagine that in 48 years, we’ll look back and be astounded at how quickly it all went.

The fight isn’t nearly as important as the make-up

The way you make up after a fight, the way you apologize and how you treat each other, is so much more important than what you were fighting about.

[Tweet “The fight isn’t nearly as important as the make-up #marriagetips #milspouse”]

Dream together

Even though it sometimes feels like our life is on hold because of the military, we spend a lot of time talking about what we want our life to look like. What our house will be like. Where we want to live. How we’ll spend our time when we finally settle down.

Love who you married

This is really silly, but John is a huge craft beer fiend. I am not. I hate beer. With. A. Passion. Talking about beer all of the time is… well, it’s annoying, honestly. But he’s who I married, and I weirdly love him even more when he’s so excited about something that makes him happy.

Give more than you take

Being married is not a giant tally game. You’ll never come out even. And if that’s how you’re approaching marriage, you’ll never be happy. I absolutely love surprising John or making him happy with (what is probably to everyone else) dumb things– badly drawn flipbooks and cartoons, a surprise dessert in his lunch, telling him to “Yeah, sure, buy another homebrewing thing-a-ma-jig.” When you both are trying to make each other happy more than making yourself happy, that’s what makes life really great.

[Tweet “When you both are trying to make each other happy more than making yourself happy, that’s what makes life really great.”]

Be joyful

Our first year of marriage was wonderful, but all of the changes– from leaving my job to moving twice in a year–were hard for me. This year, I’ve been able to find more of the joy in life and in our relationship. And that’s been pretty great.

Celebrate everything

If I’ve said it once on the blog, I’ve said it a bunch: I’m a shameless over celebrator. Life is just too short to brush off the little things. One of my favorite celebrations from this year is going out for breakfast on the last day of John’s night shift. It’s something we both look forward to, and something that helps with managing a frustrating schedule.

Happy second anniversary, sweetheart! Here’s to our third year… and many more lessons and wonderful memories!