Johnny and I celebrated our 9th year of marriage and 14 years back together this week! I truly love our relationship. Johnny and I fell in love more than 21 years ago...but it wasn't the right time back then. I knew from the moment of our first kiss in June 2005 that he was "the one" for me, though. Our life together is even better than I could have imagined back when we met. :) It hasn't been perfect by any means...but it has all been worth it to get to where we are today.
You know...they talk about the "seven year itch" in relationships where people start losing interest or become dissatisfied in the relationship by the time the seventh year rolls around. However, I think the opposite is true for us. The first six years of our relationship were definitely the hardest. Dealing with exes, moving in together, blending families and finances, adult children and their pets and/or families moving in and out, and various other things...we had a rocky start (and that rocky start lasted awhile). We got married on our 5th anniversary and during that first year of married life, there were times I wondered if we'd even make it to our first wedding anniversary. It was an especially chaotic time in our lives and I don't think either of us handled the stress well The biggest thing at the time was the fact that Johnny's daughter, her husband, their four kids, four dogs, and a cat moved into our living room a couple months after our wedding. We already had Johnny's mom living with us, my two kids, three dogs, and three cats. What turned out to be "for a couple weeks" turned into six months.
But by August 2018, everyone else had moved out and we finally had a sense of normalcy for pretty much the first time in our relationship. We were able to rearrange and redecorate the house the way we wanted (which has been an ongoing process). Johnny retired from pool work (while still working for USPS) and I started doing transcription work from home to bring in some extra money. We were able to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy in 2019 so that we could make payments over a five year period which eased the financial burdens that we'd been struggling with years before. We were also in the position to be able to buy our first car together after dealing with our previous vehicles getting old and crapping out. We were still dealing with teenagers, but I think we were in a better place to be able to handle all that comes with raising teenage girls.
Then when Covid hit in March 2020...things really settled in to a comfortable routine for us. Johnny also started working from home and we were basically spending all day together everyday. It's funny...we talk more about how our day is going now that we're both at home together than we did when he was gone at work for the majority of the day. And I started CandiMaker in 2021 and Johnny has been wonderfully supportive. He always asks me what things I've sold and says "good job" every time he hears the cha-ching notification from my phone letting me know I got another sale.
And then in 2025, Johnny and I finally became empty-nesters for the first time ever. It's just us, two golden retrievers, and three tabby cats enjoying a nice life together. My favorite thing is sitting at the coffee table in the living room to eat dinner and watch a show together...which is exactly what we did to celebrate our anniversary. We ordered Hibachi Boy for dinner and finished an episode of The Bombing of Pan Am 103. :)
Happy anniversary to us!