Marriage; forever & always..

I was always told to never get married young, but how crazy that statement sounded to me considering majority of our parents/grandparents got married young back in the days. I knew from a young age I wanted to be married and to be able to have a forever bestfriend. My parents didn't get married but I knew that marriage was the ultimate goal that I wanted for myself. Growing up I use to watch the Hallmark Channel with my mom and dreamed of having that perfect life on tv. Eventually I did find that "perfect life" with my forever love Dylan.

I in fact got married pretty young I would say but I don't regret getting married when I did. I use to remeber some of my close friends talking me out of getting married to my then fiance because to them I wouldn't get to enjoy my single life, but I didn't care anyway! I met the love of my life from an old friend back then whenever we were in modeling school - Barbizon. We were all still in high school and my friend and her boyfriend were two years older than me. My future husband was dating my friend from modeling school. How crazy is that to say right now lol. But I saw how poorly he would treat her and I knew I didn't want to be with someone like that!! I was already in a longterm relationship with my middle school love and wished she would find someone better. I hated my friend's boyfriend and we would always get into it whenever we would talk. I also told myself I didn't want nothing to do with him and would avoid him at all costs. Anywho, years later, we somehow reconnected on Instagram and that's where our forever love story started. I had saw that he had joined the military and was doing really well for himself. He started liking some of my photos on Instagram and eventually he messaged me and I of course messaged back. We started talking that day and never stopped. I was skeptical if I should even give him a chance from how he had treated my friend years ago when we were younger but my friends encouraged to give him a chance. I always said that people change for who they want so I went with it and decided to give the relationship a try. Well, I gave him a chance! He came to visit me in Texas all the way from North Carolina and that's when he asked me to be his girlfriend! We made things offical in August of August 2016. It was going to be a long-distance relationship until we figured things out for our furture but we managed to still make it work. We would visit each other back and forth fromTexas and North Carolina as much as we could. After being in a relationship for a couple of months, he decided to come to Texas to spend the holidays with his family. As we were preparing for a Christmas concert that I loved to go to every year around the holidays, he proposed to me and I said Yes! He had a bunch of lPTO time saved up from the military so he stayed for a while with me in Texas until he was deployed in February of 2017. We stayed engaged through out the entire deployment and had told each other that we would get married whenever he comes back since we didn't want our married life to be long distance. He eventually comes back from deployment and we make a trip to Mexico for Christmas. He wanted to ask my father for my hand in marriage. Unforuntaly, my father didn't really give a solid yes or no answer but we had already had a date of when we would be married at the court house. It was a rough start on getting married because my father didn't approve of the marriage. We were supposed to get married on the 4th of January but my father told us he wasn't going to go since he didn't approve of Dylan. The night of the 4th was the most intense and horrible situation we had ever experienced between our families. Eventually, we decided that we were going to get married on the 5th and let my father know that we would love for him to be there tomorrow for us to be married. The day comes and we get to the court house and there we see my dad in the lobby waiting for us. He gives Dylan his blessing and we proceed to the court room. We were finally married!! Janurary 5th, 2018 is when our marriage offically had started!

Unfortuantely, we never had an extravagant wedding because of school and military interfering with our plans. Nonetheless we were happy to be married after the issues we went through with our families. After we got married, we enjoyed our married life for a few weeks until Dylan had to go back to Killeen and prepare everything for my move later in the year. He was on the search for rental homes and finding furniture. He bought our first puppy and was anxiously awaiting for my arrival for our life to be complete. I had to stay in Houston because I needed 4 more months until graduation before I could leave. I eventually graduated and we moved into our first home in Killeen, Texas together with Achilles our German Shepherd puppy. He was stationed in Killeen due to the military and it was 3 hours away from my entire family. I had never moved so far from my family and friends before. We eventually finished moving in and had our house warming party where my husband surprised me with another puppy who is named Troy (also, German Shepherd)! It was a madhouse living in Killeen in the very beginning, we had two puppies under the age of 4 months and we were still trying to unpack our belongings. We were in our honeymoon stage, newly married, in love, enjoying our new home and puppies, getting settled with work and school, making new friends and meeting my husband's friends and overall a new city I had to get use to now. It was awesome living with my bestfriend. We would cook for each other and would have dinner each night, have our friends over all the time, clean with each other, go to the gym together, and enjoyed Achilles and Troy being in their puppy stages, trying new restaurants in the city, overall we would always spend time with each other! I loved being married and was grateful to be married to him.

The first year was indeed the hardest year that we had to go through as a married couple. I always heard people say that the first year of marriage is the hardest year for couples. I never believed them, but yeah it's true. Just because marriage has some hard times, doesn't mean you should let it discourage you from getting married. If you can make it past your first year of marriage, then the rest of the challenges won't be so deadly. Our marriage wasn't easy since the very beginning, but who's marriage is easy right? We have been through a lot of trials and tribulations together, but we have managed to still keep our marriage afloat throughout the years. We have been married for 5 years going on 6 years in 2024 and it feels good to continue adding more years to our marriage. My husband is the male version of me and I am the woman version of him which is why we click so well. Our marriage even though has had it's challenges, we have had our wonderful memorable times too just like all marriages. My husband and I have a lot of things in common such as going shooting at the gun range, we love hiking together with our boys, watching scary movies, painting together, gym dates, and so much more. He truly is my bestfriend and sometimes my only friend. I know some people say that opposites attract but I also believe that sometimes being the same as your person works too. Keep in mind that opposites don't always attract either. You'll know when you have found your person! My husband and I are the same but we have our differences as well. He's very quiet and i'm the loud one, but we are the same. That's what makes us unqiue.

What makes marriage hard?

In my eyes, I think it has to be the people you let into your marriage. My close friends have had such a huge influence on how I reacted to certain things in my marriage such as fights, communciation, and trust. I would listen to my friends and other people for advice on how I should handle certain things/situations when I was ignoring one large component. These friends I was asking advice from had never been married before, couldn't last more than 4 months in a relationship, or just simply would tell me to leave my husband instead of trying to work it out. I started to remove these friends from my life and marriage because I knew they were simply outside noise that I didn't need. If I wasn't removing these friends, I was just simply keeping my issues that I was having with my husband to myself. My marriage would be on the constant decline when paying attention to the outside noise, but I knew I needed to make a change as soon as possible. Which I did. Don't allow people that have never been married, couldn't stay married, couldn't last in a relationship dictate your marriage. A marriage and it's issues is between a wife and husband only not third/fourth/sixth parties. Take it from experience, I always have to learn the hard way. If you are angry at your partner and would rather not talk to anyone about it, go for a walk/gym. Let yourself cool off and once you have calmed down, talk to your partner!

Finances also make it hard. I have never dealt with this in my marriage but I know of those that do have this as an obstacle but it's not impossible to get through as a couple. There are so many educational books out there to educate yourself and your partner to handle your finances. There are also courses out there that can help as well.

Communication is another major problem that many experience. My husband and I use to struggle with this problem in the beginning of our marriage. Once, we got familiar with our love language and pet peeves our communication increased immensely. Just talk to your spouse, what bothers you? Makes you mad? How do you want love to be shown to you? I promise it makes things easier and communication goes a long way once you find out how to communicate with your spouse. I'm glad we learned how to communicate and even though it takes time it will come.

Lack of effort is one as well. We struggled in the beginning but now it has improved but this takes time. Please remember that you are still needing to be spontaneous with one another. Plan those dates, surprise each other with flowers or chocolates on a random day, clean the house on your day off even if you want to relax instead. Overall, make the effort and plan things as if you are newly dating again. This is key for a working marriage and be mindful of each other's feelings during this process. Marriage is a job, you have to get up everyday and work at it. Your spouse is your job. The only difference is that a marriage you can't make money from just like you would your job. You have to work at it every single day even on the days that you are tired just like you would for your job. Sometimes you don't want to go to work because you are tired but you still have to go and you do go. The more you continue to work at it, the more you both will grow together. Therefore, give your 100% just like you would at your job for your marriage to grow and succeed!!

We have struggled with these and way much more but we made sure to correct these flaws before it started to damage our marriage. Working on your marriage will allow for it to flourish and eventually you'll be sitting on the couch together 40 years from now looking back on everything you all have been through. I feel accomplished and blessed every single day to have someone that wants to work on our marriage.

Angie's Advice:

Whenever my husband and I would fight in the beginning of our marriage, I had so many single friends that would give me so much bad advice. This included women and men. Everything that would come out of their mouth was "leave him", "you deserve better", "he's not good enough for you", "if I were in your position, I would leave him", "I don't put up with that stuff, I don't know how you can". These comments and feedback from my own friends every single time we would fight was something I didn't want to hear from them. I wanted my friends to tell me to work on my marriage or they would help me as much as they can in a positive way. Those aren't things you tell someone whenever you know that person is their person so why say it? Eventually, I removed myself from those friends but now looking back at those friends they are STILL single and ALONE for a reason. I know what those reasons are and I will continue to educate people on why I have continued to be married for this long. They were never married to begin with so why would they give those types of advice to me? I never understood how people that had never been in a long term relationship or been married before could have opinions of leaving my spouse so quickly because of our fights/disagreements. If you all fight, keep it to yourself especially from family. Family is very protective and once they hear a bad thing about your spouse, it's game over for them liking your spouse ever again. Last time saying this but keep those people away from your marriage and away from your problems! You will know who you can talk/vent too and who you can't and that's okay. You don't always have to vent/talk to your friends, sometimes some things are better left unsaid and away from others. Those people are the most dangerous to have in your circle and especially included in your marriage. Your marriage is between you and your spouse.