For those of you who have the unfortunate fate of not having met my husband yet, I can tell you that within the first five minutes of introducing himself to you, you’ll probably have already figured out that he’s quite in love with me.

Those who only know Anthony and his perspective of our relationship might be surprised to learn that I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to love. You see, when I was younger I had a tendency to fall in love with everything. With a feeling, with an idea, with a hope, with a dream, with a project. And falling in love easily doesn’t lend itself to a lot of success in the world of romance.

Over time, I developed a lot of theories on love. I guess maybe I should correct myself by saying, I had a lot of theories on love. I have a lot of the same ones today, but some have been replaced in these last five years.

The Myths

Soul Mates

I don’t really believe in soul mates. To me, labeling my relationship as one that was simply “meant to be” takes out some of the magic of it. I fought like hell for what I have and I like to get the credit for it. I suppose that, for me, it diminishes how hard we’ve had to work at our relationship.

I do think that God intended us for each other, but I also think that we chose each other and we make the decision to choose each other every single day.

Self Love

A lot of people say that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. And I’m here to say that this is not true. If you were to ask me what I love about Anthony, I could list a hundred reasons, but one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with him was because of the way he loves me. It sounds a bit selfish, I know, and it is in some ways, but I don’t apologize for my selfish love in this way.

Seeing me through Anthony’s eyes allows me to learn to love myself in ways I haven’t been able to for my entire life. When Anthony looks at me, though through rose colored glasses at times, he sees someone who is beautiful. Someone who is strong. Someone who is brave. Someone who is kind. Someone who is intelligent. Someone who is invincible. I couldn’t tell you how true or untrue his ideas on me are–I suppose it’s up to each person to see me as they choose–but I can tell you that his view of me makes me believe that I might be a fraction of the things he believes I am and even that is enough for me to love myself a little more.

It is Better to Have Loved

I’ve heard it so many times (and said it many times myself) that to get to your “one” relationship, you have to wade through the pain of the dating world. The farther I am from those relationships, I’ve learned that you do not have to go through bad relationships to experience good ones. This isn’t to say that my previous relationships didn’t teach me anything, because they certainly did, but not all of the lessons I learned were “for the best.”

I don’t necessarily regret my past, I just don’t always see that there was necessity in it. I had friends in college that would tell me that they’d never been in love or had a “real boyfriend/girlfriend” and I’ve told every one of them the same thing. Being in a relationship just to “experience” it isn’t a reason to jump into it. The problem with this theory is that people forget that emotional wounds take an incredibly long time to heal and, sometimes, these wounds can harm healthy relationships that come along later.

The Truths

What has marriage taught me about love?

Expect the Unexpected

For one, it’s taught me that love is unexpected. If you would’ve told eighth grade Lindsay that she’d end up marrying Anthony from gym class, she would’ve either gagged or laughed uncontrollably. Heck, if you would’ve told that to me in my senior year of high school, I’d probably have had the same reaction. But one day, something changed.

Even now, Anthony surprises me all the time. Whether it’s another little quark I find or something much deeper that I never realized, I’m always learning more about him. He still surprises me with the depth of his understanding of people.

Laugh Often

One of the greatest parts of marriage (if not the best part) is how often I get to laugh. I can easily say that I’ve never been as happy at any time in my life as I have in this past year. Over time, I’ve grown to be a bit up-tight and Type A in how I handle life, but Anthony brings me back to a younger, more carefree version of myself. When I was little, I was notorious for being the playful one of the family. I had such a great appreciation for the simplest things. He helps me be the person I truly am.

Adventure Always

I’ve rediscovered how much I love exploring. I don’t necessarily mean traveling. I really mean making everything–even the smallest things–into adventures. This can be anything from a trip to the grocery store to trying a little hole in the wall restaurant. Whatever we do, we make it an adventure together. Doing this has taught both of us more about each other than anything else we do, aside from sitting down and talking.

Overall, embarking on this lifelong journey has been the most rewarding, most challenging thing I’ve ever done and I am truly thankful that I was given such an opportunity.

 

Photographs by Plum Pretty Photography