It’s crazy when I stop to think that we were engaged for seven months and that today is our seven month wedding anniversary! WOW! Where has the time gone?! Phil and I joke around and say that we’re old news now, although it seems it was just yesterday that we were feverishly planning a wedding in just 30 days! For the past six months, on every anniversary day, we’ve paused our busy little lives to reflect on lessons learned, things we want to achieve together, and how we can better support each other as husband and wife, and how to live our marriage for ourselves and not based off of other people’s expectations.
Here are a few things we’ve learned over the past seven months of married life:
- Nothing Changes …well at least not immediately! So seriously, five seconds after we were married everyone was asking if we felt different, and the answer was NO! No, we did not say I do and turn into two completely different people, well at least not immediately! I can say that over the past seven months the most noticeable change in my personality has been that I’ve adopted a more “us” vs. “me” attitude. Before I do anything now, I want to make sure that Phil’s thoughts are taken into consideration. A MAJOR change from the girl who was used to just doing whatever she wanted in the past! But for the most part, we’re still the same people we were before saying our I Do’s.
- Communication is extremely important! The best advice we received was making sure that both of us sat down and discussed our expectations for each other. For example, what do I expect from Phil when he gets off from work, and vice versa, does he expect me to make dinner every night, do I expect him to wash the dishes after I’ve cooked dinner, how often do we both want to be intimate? A major thing for me is being able to decompress when I come home. I can be on the phone with Phil from the moment I leave work until I pull up at home, but as soon as I step foot into the house, I need a few moments of complete silence. It was important that I expressed this to Phil, or else he’d be left feeling as though he had somehow done something wrong when suddenly I walked in the house and stopped talking to him. We’ve learned that assuming your significant other magically understands how you operate or what you expect from them is a recipe for disaster! Phil is not responsible for the things I keep in my head, nor am I responsible for his nonverbal expectations.
- Plan your marriage or life will plan it for you! We both led pretty busy lives prior to getting married, and nothing about that has changed. In fact, most days it seems as though we’re even busier than we were before. What we’ve learned over the past seven months, is that no commitment is ever more important than us spending uninterrupted quality time together. We’ll be saying NO a lot more to others and yes to each other over the upcoming months. We don’t ever want to get to a place where our spending time together starts and ends with us both exhausted on opposite sides of the sofa. Date nights, date mornings, mini vacations, ANY time where just the two of us can be together and block out the rest of the world is VERY important.
- Compliment each other. My husband is the sexiest man on this earth to me. I want him to always know that that’s how I feel about him, and the only way for that to happen is if I tell him, and tell him often. I think sometimes as women our expectations are that we need to be affirmed by our significant others, told we’re beautiful every day, but what about him? Just because he’s a guy doesn’t mean that he doesn’t need his ego stroked from time to time!
- Buy lingerie. Just in case my dad reads this, I’m not going to go into too many details here, but umm yeah! Lingerie has a way of making you feel empowered, and him too! When I fall asleep in something beautiful it makes me feel beautiful, I move differently. So I can say without a shadow of a doubt (for me at least), lingerie is definitely a mood enhancer. At the end of the day slip into something sexy and set le’ Mood!
- Conversations with your friends change. Seriously we had an entire conversation about kitchens ( like I really cook every day lol), how to divide up the holidays, summer vacations, and home decor. Whatever did we use to talk about before?
- My Man is My Man…aka…My marriage is unique to me! Phil and I are very cognizant about not comparing our marriage to anyone else. We march to the beat of our own drum, so what works for another couple may not work for us, and we’re okay with that. We’re creating a life that fits our needs, and lifestyle. We dream together, make plans for our future together, not with anyone else. So at the end of the day if he’s happy and I’m happy, then our marriage is happy. That’s what matters most to us!
I’m looking forward to sharing the rest of my life with this man, and I can’t wait to see what new adventures life has for us! Happy Anniversary to US!
XOXO,
Gigi
Pretty Is A Lifestyle 