Whether it’s your first anniversary or your 50th, anniversaries are special occasions where you take time as a couple to reflect on where your marriage has been and where it’s going.
An anniversary is a wonderful occasion to celebrate the milestones of the time you’ve spent together, so make sure you make each one as memorable as the last. You don’t have to get fancy or expensive; the most important thing you can do to celebrate is to spend time together remembering and planning. Take time to talk about what you have in common now, and how (if) that has changed since you first got together. Your marriage has probably matured over the years-the things you had in common when you first got together have most likely matured as well.
Like couples who marry young. The world has changed, fads have come and gone, take a moment to remember the disco phase you both went through, or how roller-skating has progressed to hiking, the first year milestone is often like a honeymoon. You are probably still holding hands out in public more often than not, and your sex life is just as fiery as it was when you were first married, in year two, though, about half of all married couples begin to “settle in” to their marriage and the physical shows of affection in public have probably faded somewhat. Remember that this is common and a sign of you becoming increasingly comfortable with each other, not the first sign of trouble.
Think of being married the second year as if you were a sophomore in high school. You’ve been around just long enough to know where the cafeteria and bathrooms are. When you leave your nylons dripping in the bathroom and he leaves his dirty socks in a smelly ball on the floor by his favorite chair, you get to remember that this is for better or for worse!
Arguments in the second year can feel way more devastating than they need to. Now you get to practice arguing without threatening to leave at the first sign of broken delusion. Face it, we all go into marriages with an expectation of how married life is going to be, and when our mate turns out to be a human rather than our knight in shining armor or our wife turns out to be a little bossy rather than a little princess, we can begin to get nervous about this whole life long commitment thing. When this happens, try to remember and remind each other that this is another milestone in the marriage, not a reason to panic. Trust the process.
There is no magic married year number that a couple can reach which indicates everything will be fine from now on, but the longer you practice loving each other, the better those years in between will be. Remember to celebrate each one as if it is as important as the first anniversary was, because it is. Spend time together and alone, and plan what you will do for the next one.