Celebrating 18 Years: Secrets to Growth, Self-Care, and Lasting Love

My husband, Tom, and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary this week. 

Ours was not an immediate love story. If you ask him, I stood him up on our first date (we disagree on this). Then, we proceeded to spend the next six months pretending we didn’t really like each other. Our dating years had a LOT of ups and downs. We were both learning how to be healthy in a relationship. Turns out, losing your mother before your first birthday (me) brings with it some pretty deep attachment wounds. And losing both of your parents to cancer (him) is also pretty freaking hard. 

The point is, I don’t attribute the health of our relationship now to some fairytale romance. If I had to give it a movie title, it would be much less The Notebook and much more Gladiator. 

In reflection, there are three things that evolved over the years that have led to our growth as a couple.  I can honestly say I am the happiest and most fulfilled I have ever been.

Before I get into it, I feel the need to state my feelings about divorce or separating. 

I am pro divorce. That might feel like a weird thing to say but I think it’s important that my stance on marriage is NOT - stay together at all costs. 

I’ve seen clients in my therapy practice for over two decades, many of whom struggle in their relationships, and I truly believe that when the work has been done, when the questions have been asked (of themselves and each other), and the conversations have been had there are times when it is better for everyone involved to close that chapter and move on to the next one. 

I do not say that lightly or without nuance. But I couldn’t write about how I feel about my marriage without also talking about my view on separating because there have been numerous times when one or both of us have questioned if we were going forward together. 

It wasn’t because leaving wasn’t an option that we stayed together. It was ultimately because we chose to stay. 

This wedding anniversary, I stopped to reflect on what has allowed us to get to where we are. 

Here are the three things that I attribute to our relationship success. 

We are BOTH committed to our individual growth. 

Hands down, this one is the most pivotal piece for me. I am a lifelong learner, it’s just who I am. I will always be obsessed with learning about myself, how to grow, how to get better. I LOVE it. But my husband also loves it. He doesn’t do everything the same way I do, but he has his own drive and passion for learning, growing and knowing himself better. He’s not doing it because I told him to or because he feels like he has to. He has a genuine desire to evolve and so do I. 

I met my husband when I was 19 years old! Such a baby! I have grown up with him. I am not the same person I was when we first met, and neither is he. This means we’ve had to learn how to grow up together. There has been immense personal growth for both of us during this time. Not FOR each other but for ourselves which has led to us being better for one another. 

We put ourSELVES first! 

What?? Aren’t you supposed to put your marriage first? This is a big one for me, and it’s one that has taken time to nurture. Ultimately it comes down to the oxygen mask analogy. When you’re on an airplane, they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first, right? This is because we can’t be good for anyone else unless we are taking care of ourselves first. This does not mean we are selfish or don’t take the other person into account. It means that we are responsible for the health and well-being of our own Nervous System. In doing so, we have the capacity to really be present for one another. We don’t try to drink from an empty cup. 

We are not afraid to be wrong. 

This one also took a while and it requires a lot of healthy vulnerability in the relationship, but ultimately when we have disagreements we are BOTH committed to looking at our part in what went wrong. We are less concerned with who is “right” and we are both focused on how to restore our connection. In our relationship it is safe enough to be vulnerable. When this is the case, it’s ok to be wrong, it’s ok to make mistakes and disagreements get resolved much quicker. 

For this last one, I asked Tom to give me what he thinks is the biggest contribution to our successful marriage. Here is what he said:

“As Eliza stated above, we are not the same people we were when we initially fell in love. I view that as a healthy thing, we’ve continued to learn, evolve and get better through the years of our life together. We’re both blessed as lifelong learners, and it is easy to simply chalk it up to that. However, I believe it is in the application of these learnings that it really becomes practical for everyday life. Learning for the sake of learning is fine, although it doesn’t help unless there is practical application / behavior change. 

Also, I very much believe in fun and laughter. Keeping an active sense of humor about things goes a long way for me. It’s easy to get worked up about every little thing in today’s world. We lean on humor to ensure we aren’t taking things too seriously. We’ve fostered an environment of having fun together, and I have had the most fun of my life alongside Eliza. 

Oh, and that “we aren’t afraid to be wrong” thing she stated above… we’re still working on that. 🙂

There you have it! I hope our reflections were valuable in some way. Now I want to hear from you! What are the biggest things that YOU think contribute to the health and longevity of a relationship?