Marriage is a Marathon

We have all heard the following:

Once you stop learning, you start dying

This is not meant to start this entry off in a morbid manner, it is simply to illustrate the journey of life and in this instance, marriage.

My Journey

My wife and I are a 'COVID marriage'. We were lucky in the sense that we had no restrictions on the day and managed to 'time' our wedding towards the 'end' of the pandemic.

There were a couple of guests and suppliers that did not make it but in the grand scheme of things, we were left relatively unscathed. Others were not.

We had our battle, sure, but in the grand scheme of things we managed to get married in the traditional manner and then the following year, we had our honeymoon.

Fast forward 3.5 years and I am sitting here typing this whilst my wife sits on the sofa and I wonder where the time has gone.

What's Next?

If time and money were no object then without a shadow of a doubt I would say that travelling around the world was next. Taking a few years to live and embrace everything this existence has to offer would be the priority.

We are 36, rent and as of today, do not have any children. Time is ticking and the priority now is looking towards starting a family. We want to have a child or children to pass our legacy on to.

Legacy. Typing that word right now feels strange like someone has suddenly offered me a mirror to shine a light on everything that is in front of me and I can see an old man staring back. It is odd.

Before I turned 36, I felt 18 and now I feel 36 with the best years of my life behind me. It feels now as though I am living for my future family. There needs will come first and anything I was holding back on now needs to be completed, as there is no time.

The Race is Never Finished

What all of this says to me and really emphasises is that the race is never finished. The journey is not over until your last breath is exhaled. You need to keep going, to keep evolving for as long as possible, as unfortunately, you cannot stay 18 forever.

I have been fortunate enough in my life to meet the woman of my dreams. Yes, she often farts and we bicker but there is no one else I would rather spend my remaining years (regardless of how many there are available to me) with.

We will hopefully welcome new members into our family unit (human and feline) over the next few years which will extend the track and I am happy about this. Yes, my time of being first is over but the bigger picture of family will soon arrive.

It scares me and I am unafraid of saying so as it is a change. In one birthday alone I feel the age at which I have attained and it seems like every day there is more and more to do, yet the flip side is worse.

I want to live to a hundred but who knows what my health will be like by that point. I may be a spring chicken or a loose husk, all I know is that I will continue to fight and keep running until someone tells me otherwise.

A Final Thought

Marriage is a lot like life. You need to keep challenging yourselves to grow and expand beyond the two of you. You need to continue to put yourselves out there and often times that feeling will be scary but then you will look back and smile.

I met the woman of my dreams nearly four years ago and whilst the thought of another forty years of life and my health scares me, there's no one I would rather run the race with than my wife.