Guys, we have all done it … forgotten about some monumental occasion in our relationship with our significant other, neglected to mention or even notice that she left that morning with flowing locks of hair and came home with a crew cut, failed to comment on how beautiful she looked in her new dress. Admit it gents, it has happened to you. They can’t hold us down if we are united in our aloofness guys! One thing that I haven’t done, thankfully, is forget about our wedding anniversary. Whew, that is a relief. Forgetting that is an automatic 6 months in the dog house with the next six months expected to be dedicated to planning for the next anniversary. Nope, never been in that situation and I feel very bad for those that have. My man-heart goes out to you.
Candace and I are getting ready to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary and, as we have gone through a lot of changes and are getting ready to go through a lot more changes, I recently was reflecting on everything we have done for our anniversaries over the years and how our life events have orchestrated what we have done. Here is a brief run-down of the standouts. First year, of course we went all out. We stayed in the honeymoon suite of a 4-star beachfront hotel. We ate a balls-expensive dinner and lived it up for an entire weekend! Second anniversary, fairly similar.
Our third and fourth anniversaries were very different. I had my brain surgeries the October before each of these anniversaries so I had limitations. Our fourth surgery actually, we went to a secluded mountain resort thing with no TV and no phone in the room. We wanted to get away from beeping electronics and people and the overwhelming busy-ness of medical drama. Fifth anniversary though, different story. We lived it up! I was tumor free! We went to a fancy resort where I got in trouble for not wearing a suit coat to dinner. That pissed me off a bit and I went up to the room, got my super cheap jacket (my shoes cost more), put that on, went to my table, promptly took it off, and made sure to be boisterous about holding that jacket over my arm on the way out of the restaurant. Dress code stuff is stupid to me.
Anyway, digression aside, at about our fifth anniversary is when we started to delve into the scary world of IVF. Guess what happened, our anniversary celebrations deflated dramatically. Huh? Wait, isn’t family building supposed to be easy? Right guys? We get to ‘practice’ all we want right? Nudge nudge in the locker room … tons of sex … oh the uninformed. Yep, scheduled sex where all we are focusing on is trying to get pregnant is super erotic, like new age porn or something right? Not sure about you guys, but it was everything but that for me. So, here we go, anniversaries after starting IVF: sixth anniversary-wine tasting at a park, seventh anniversary-don’t even remember, eighth anniversary-dinner at a place that we wouldn’t normally go to, ninth anniversary-not a damn thing. Crazy right? Why the big change? Why didn’t we fly to Vegas? Rent a private jet to New Zealand? Train with the Chinese acrobats? Because we were flat broke, timing everything around Candace’s ovulation cycle, and burning through home pregnancy tests. Our day started with thinking about our next IVF round and taking shots, and it ended with … thinking about our next round of IVF and taking shots. Our world revolved around foods to improve fertility, meditation to promote embryo implantation, and a foot soak to do something (have to ask Candace about that one). Such is the life of a pair of inferts (my catchy name for a couple suffering with infertility-do you like it) such as us.
Where am I going with all this? We don’t normally dribble on about meaningless stuff so I apologize if I have utilized your attention for futility, I hope I bring it all together here … big hope! Our tenth anniversary is coming up. That is BIG time, right? 10 years! We are past the honeymoon phase, past the 7 year itch, past Candace realizing how often I fart and burp, past 2 brain surgeries, past 7 years of infertility and now hoping to meet our Jelly Bean soon. And, what are we planning on doing? Going somewhere not too expensive for dinner and not too far away. No fanfare, no extravagant trips, no fancy gifts. We are way too focused on not missing an instant of what will be our only biological child … ever … coming into the world. And you know what, in retrospect, we couldn’t be happier. We did it. We celebrated rock star style for the earlier anniversaries and although we would love to live it up at a rave in Spain or something for our tenth anniversary, it’s not in the cards. Why? We are definitely flat broke, definitely worried something is going to go wrong, definitely holding our breath and afraid to travel to the next zip code for fear of missing some monumental second in our little one’s life. We are terrified, not scared, petrified! We have come so far, worked so hard, and prayed so much that our Jelly Bean will be healthy and be delivered by our Wonder-Surro with no complications that our tenth anniversary seems to pale in comparison to the importance of all that we are facing.
I have known Candace for 13.5 years (She has known me for 13 … ask her about that). We have been married for almost 10 years. She is my closest friend, my confidant, my source of stability when my world falls apart. You know how to tell you have found ‘The One,’ when being around them makes you a better person. That is my Candace. We battled a brain tumor and have been battling infertility for what seems like forever and did nothing but get closer. If your boat in the tumultuous seas of life is similar to ours, I hope that you always look towards your loved one with hope and admiration. No matter how tough and scary the storms get, you will make it through. You, together, will survive. For our tenth anniversary, we will celebrate each other and celebrate what we hope will be the product of that love. Happy anniversary Candace!
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If you like our blog, how about showing us some serious bloglovin’ and follow us? You can subscribe to our blog via email and can receive our posts as soon as we click send! (See right sidebar for how to sign-up) If you REALLY like us, we are also on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest!
Happy anniversary!
Congratulations on 10 years and on fighting through the struggles to only get close and improve your marriage. Thank you for this post! Justine
happy anniversary! You two have weathered the storm and are an inspiration.
Thank you Leighannn! Inspiration, no. We just figure that we are both in that storm together, may as well laugh about it and stick it out.