“Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.”
Joyce Brothers
Anniversaries sneak up on you.
One minute you’re still deciding who’s going to take out the trash, and the next you’re sitting in a restaurant you can’t afford, trying to remember how many years it’s been since you said “I do.”
There’s something profoundly human about the whole thing—this annual moment where we collectively stop, look at our partner, and think, Wow. We really built a whole life out of this.
It’s like the universe’s way of saying, “Congratulations, you’ve officially survived another year of shared Netflix accounts and thermostat negotiations. Have some cake.”
I met Shelley when we were eighteen. We had big dreams, bigger hair, and no concept of what life actually was.
Fast forward a couple decades, two kids, one mortgage and a thousand inside jokes later, and here we are—still laughing, still figuring it out, still wondering who’s responsible for the mysterious wet towel that keeps appearing on the bed.
Anniversaries, I’ve realized, aren’t about grand romantic gestures. They’re about proof.
Proof that you kept showing up, even when life got noisy.
Proof that you can play UNO like it’s the World Series, and still love each other through the Draw Fours.
Proof that you can drive each other crazy in a hundred tiny ways—my sneezes, her chewing—and still sit across from each other, a little tired but deeply grateful.
There’s a photo of us on our wedding day—me in a rented tux, Shelley glowing in a way that made every flashbulb look unnecessary.
If you look closely, you can see two people who had no idea what they were signing up for.
We thought “for better or worse” meant forgetting an anniversary or running out of gas once.
Turns out it also covers sleepless nights, sick kids, career changes, and learning—again—that home projects are just expensive arguments with paint samples.
What I love about being married this long is how the little things become the big things.
The small, ordinary moments that no one ever writes about.
The quiet mornings when the house is still and the coffee’s just right.
The quick glance across the room when something ridiculous happens and you both just know.
The slow teamwork of parenting, surviving, and pretending you both didn’t just Google “how to get mildew out of towels.”
Those are the things that hold a life together.
Not the anniversaries themselves, but the years that lead up to them—the inside jokes, the shared chaos, the tiny moments that turn into the stories you tell later.
I think that’s the secret.
Marriage isn’t about avoiding the mess—it’s about choosing your favorite person to clean it up with.
Shelley’s been my favorite person for twenty-three years. Longer than that, really.
She’s my calm in the noise, my anchor in the chaos, and the only person I trust to tell me when I’m wrong—and be right about it.
So here’s to us—and to everyone who’s made it through another year of love, laughter, and renovations—of the house, and of ourselves.
May we keep finding reasons to laugh.
May we keep choosing each other.
And may we keep remembering that the little moments—the ones we barely notice—are the ones that make it all worth it.
And may we never forget who stacked the last Draw Four.
