Windsor studded cardigan, old (similar); ℅ Style Lately tank, old (LOVE this option!); Old Navy jeans and necklace (similar); Target bag, old (LOVE this!) and boots (similar); Ray ban sunglasses.
Before you start thinking I’m completely crazy (I am), hear me out. I was reading the last book in the Divergent series last week, and despite the horrific and unfair ending, there was a really honest quote about marriage/relationships that struck a chord with me:
“I fell in love with him. But I don’t stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day when I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”
I immediately felt like this is what real relationships are. Not the beginning stage, where all is perfect and you can’t find fault with your partner. Not the day of your wedding, where nothing else seems as important as that one day. Not the romantic and grand gestures that mark the early days. All the romantic dates, the proposal and love sick moments aren’t what makes my marriage special. It’s the small choices we make, daily, to say that we are in this together. Putting our kids to bed and debating at night how to deal with particular issues. Deciding what to pay off with our tax money and where to go on our next vacation. Laughing over cooking disasters and long overdue laundry piles. Deciding to let snide comments go and wondering if this is really it, forever. Reading a romance novel and wondering why HE isn’t as wonderfully romantic as the hero in your book. Seeing him first thing in the morning looking worse for the wear, or letting him see you give birth, or bringing him to to E.R. for food poisoning. Dealing with embarrassing issues, the less than perfect aspects of life that pops of daily. That’s real.
I chose him once, long ago. I didn’t know where it would lead me or what I was getting into, I just went with my gut instinct and said YES. To everything. I just wanted him and trusted that it would work. We do make it work, day by day, sometimes minute by minute. I trust that he will choose me everyday and he trusts that I will do the same. All decisions after that stem from that choice. Building this family, building US, it’s important. He is my life’s work, because he makes me better. I can’t hide my true self around him, good or bad, because he knows my soul and won’t let me kid myself. He believes in me and I believe in him.
Being with someone is not an easy way to live. It means constantly compromising, always thinking of how your choices affect them, living and loving someone through the mundane pieces of daily life. Yet I know that when I wake up each morning and see him beside me, when we smile over the dinner table and snuggle in bed at night, that I choose him, and he chooses me.