This week John and I are celebrating 29 years of marriage.
When we first got married I decided I never wanted to lose that love I felt for him.
I wanted to be madly in love with him for the rest of my life.
I knew one of the best gifts I could give my future children was to stay completely head over heels in love with their father.
I pondered to how do I guard myself against taking our love for granted.
I came up with a pretty simple solution that has made the past 29 years a lot of fun.
All I needed to do was to keep being his girlfriend – I already knew I loved that role.
So this is how I kept defining who I was in our relationship - I just kept being John Hunter’s girlfriend.
This mindset kept me from turning into the roommate or the mom. It kept my thoughts focused on how he is amazing every day.
I feel in love with the man I dated, so I just kept dating that amazing man.
I didn’t look for things that he needed to change or how he was doing things wrong.
I just kept loving the things that I first fell in love with and then my brain got in the habit of finding new things to love about him.
And you know what happened, our love didn’t stay the same….
It became even better and it made our love 29 years ago pretty dim by comparison.
I still love being John Hunter’s girlfriend. I still get butterflies in my stomach when he walks into the room.
My heart leaps when I see his name on my phone.
My feelings didn’t subside they just intensified through the years.
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” Mignon Mclaughlin
In honor of being married for 29 years here are 29 things that I love about my boyfriend:
1. His amazing green eyes.
2. How he looks in a suit.
3. How he is constantly whistling without even noticing.
4. His loyalty to my family.
5. His wisdom.
6. He is so much cooler than me, especially in his music taste.
7. He is the most generous person I know.
8. He is my soft place to land.
9. His voice.
10. His relationship with his Savior.
11. His sense of humor and especially that his daughters inherited it.
12. He is a great date.
13. His love of nice things.
14. His inability to take offense.
19. His amazing dance moves.
16. His joy for a coug win (BYU).
17. His love for his parents and siblings.
18. His laugh.
19. He is a mean short-order cook.
20. His tolerance of my love affair with TJMaxx.
21. His self-discipline.
22. His love for the temple.
23. His joy when all his kids are home.
24. His love for a good road trip.
25. His silver fox hair.
26. His joy in seeing other people’s successes.
27. His ability to push me to greater things without it feeling like he is pushing me.
28. He is a fellow 80’s lover.
29. His ability to make me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.
You get to decide how you want to define yourself in your marriage – there is no rule book. There is a lot of advice on what is a happy marriage is but people usually get confused about how to create a happy marriage.
It really comes down to one skill. Managing your mind. Noticing how you are thinking about your spouse, yourself, and your relationship, then deciding on purpose on what you want to think. This is a skill.
If you need help creating an amazing love that you want to feel every day and gaining the skill of managing your mind I would love to help. Book a call with me to start creating a life that you love.