I always heard growing up, "Don't rush things when it comes to a relationship."
I always kept that in the back of my mind when meeting someone new or starting a new relationship. There is a stigma that if you get married soon after you start dating, you're bound to get divorced pretty fast. While yes, that can be true in some situations, not all situations are like that. Sometimes you just click.
I'll be honest, it is not like me to want to get married to someone so fast.
My longest relationship was when I was in high school. I dated a guy I worked with for two years, and we had just started talking about us living together but hadn't gotten to seriously talking about marriage. I told myself that in order to feel ready to marry someone, it was probably best to date for a few years. Something in that relationship just held us back from going the extra step to getting married or even engaged. Part of it was me going to college, the other part was probably that it wasn't a perfect relationship. If I could go back in time, that relationship wouldn't have gone past three months, if even that.
We don't have some fancy love story to tell, we don't have one at all actually.
I had just gotten out of a crappy three-week relationship and decided I might as well hop on Tinder and see who I find. My husband had just gotten back from his first deployment and happened to be in my area because of a concert he went to. We matched, we sent Vine quotes back and forth for a couple of hours, and then I gave him my Snapchat and went to bed. The next day we spent time just sending Snapchats to each other. He eventually told me he was going to a barracks party that evening and they were doing karaoke, and I said that sounds like a good time. He took that as an opportunity to invite me to go with him. I lived an hour and a half away from where he was stationed at the time and had no car, so I told him I wouldn't have a way to get down there. This guy was so dedicated to meeting me, he offered to pay for an Uber to take me... which was not cheap at all.
When we finally met in person, we instantly clicked.
I had been on a few Tinder dates before and it was always awkward at first when meeting. With my husband, it felt natural and normal. After spending more and more time together, the feelings on both ends kept getting stronger. It's your typical honeymoon phase, but the only difference is the end of it didn't break us.
Two months and three days after dating, we signed the papers making us officially married.
We had talked about how we knew we were going to marry each other one day after we had been together for a month. It's just like that annoying answer to "how did you know that was the person you wanted to marry." The annoying answer being, "you just know." Well, I can confirm that. You will know when you have found your person!
Almost two years later, we are still madly in love with each other, have a cat, and a son.
We started dating December 1, 2018, and got married on February 4, 2019. It's been nearly two years since we first met, and I can confidently say our love for each other is still as strong as it was before, if not stronger. We get to experience life together now! Learning how to be a mom and dad for the first time, moving to Hawaii and leaving our families over 3,000 miles away, trying new foods (big fans of food), and so much more.
It can be difficult sometimes, no relationship is perfect, but I can confidently say that yes, we may have "rushed" things, but it didn't end up in a disaster. If you love someone and you know they're the one you're supposed to be with forever, there's nothing wrong with that.
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