Flaunt it Friday: Significant Others

themommykelly's, theme this week is the story of your meeting with your SO :-) I've enjoyed reading other participants stories... here is ours.

I met DH when I was 25. I've blogged about our first date earlier this year . I'd been working for 3-4 years, and had been single for 4 of them. My previous relationship had burnt me a bit (as they usually do) and I was almost resigned to being a singleton. I wasn't opposed to meeting people, but it was difficult because I really wanted to marry within my faith... and that restricted the pool quite a bit! So after praying rather desperately I decided to just get on with life and not dwell on it. It was hard, because we live in a world that is oriented to coupledom. I didn't always succeed in having a serenity about it. But I tried to make some plans to give myself goals that kept my mind off it.

I knew DH sort of. He originally lived in Whangarei (2 hours away for overseas readers) but had moved to Auckland to study. Once he found a job he moved to our side of town and boarded with some close friends of ours in their small flat. So I knew who he was but didn't have much to do with him. He was and still is a shy person, and found it hard to socialise.

One day (after stewing about it for several weeks) he called and asked me out. You can read about that here! After our first date I invited him back in to meet the folks but he declined. Too shy! Things progressed slowly. I was afraid to commit to a relationship because of my fear of being hurt again and because I wanted to be sure that he was the "right" one. Asking him out was a big step for me, as opposed to accepting invitations to go out from him. I spent quite a few weeks in denial that I was having any sort of relationship.

Eventually I realised that I enjoyed his company and things started to advance more rapidly. We ended up spending our lunch hours together, our evenings together and weekends too. Western Springs was a favourite place to have a lunchtime pash. LOL!

In fact, having to be apart got harder and harder as our feelings for each other grew. I was still living at home so DH often would arrive back at his flat at midnight much to the amusement of our mutual friends! He got breath tested several times on his many trips back home on Friday/Saturday nights but the only thing he would've scored positive for would've been "well kissed". :-)

Taking the risk to commit to marriage was a big step for both of us for reasons not appropriate to discuss on this blog. But suffice it to say we had several months of very stressful days before DH popped the question and I accepted. And so, the big day came, we got married and here we are now with 2 kids and yes, we're still in love.

We have had our moments of course! Both of us are excellent at sulking. We sometimes don't communicate very well. Neither of us is perfect and some of our foibles irritate the other. But over all our relationship has become stronger for which I am extremely grateful and feel very blessed. But that doesn't happen by chance and both of us are aware that this marriage thing requires attention. I don't want to take it for granted.

NB: Photo taken yesterday... we had some family photos taken for the Christmas cards, so expect a few more in the next few days.