On Being Married...

A few months ago I wrote a post titled "On Being Engaged..." that expressed how much I hated being engaged. Well lets just say it got way more attention than I anticipated and I'm sure many people got the absolute wrong idea about me and my relationship with Matt. At the time I wrote it, I was incredibly frustrated with school, depressed from all the snow, and just missing Matt more than is healthy. To be honest, I just really, really wanted to be married, and so I wanted to write a so called "sequel" to my previous post with a more positive outlook called...

 Why Being Married Rocks

I would like to start with a disclaimer - I haven't been married for that long, but in the short time that I have been Mrs. Matt Billings, I would like to think I have a very small taste of what married life is like (without kids - thank heavens!) and so far, it rocks.

1.) No more goodbyes.  The absolute WORST thing about dating is saying goodbye at the end of the night and going your separate ways.  Now don't get me wrong, some nights it was actually a relief that I got to send Prince Charming home because he was driving me absolute bonkers, but majority of the time saying goodbye was the hardest part of the day... er, night.  Whatever. I use to tell people that Matt and I's relationship was defined by "goodbyes", since we had a long distance relationship and to every wonderful "hello" there was a sad and depressing "goodbye" that always managed to make my mascara run. Well after the "I do's", the only "goodbye" I say is when he goes to work, and that's nothing compared to the previous goodbyes.  No more kisses on the doorstep - only kisses goodnight while he's holding me tight in our bed.

2.) I got myself a hott date EVERY weekend.  Matt is HOTT.  Like dang hott. And I'm a very lucky girl in the fact that I get to go on a date with him every weekend.  My dating years seemed to have a pattern of either feast or famine when it came to getting dates - I would have a date every weekend for a few months and then I would have nothing for double the amount of time.  It was frustrating, especially when I went to BYU expecting dates all the time and NEVER got asked out. (that's right folks, I was the girl who went to BYU and never got one date, but that's another story for another post).  It rocks to have a so-called built in date every weekend.  Even if it is just sitting at home having a Harry Potter marathon and baking cookies, it's still wonderful to know you have plans every weekend that are not watching sappy chick flicks with your roommates and then planning your perfect future wedding on Pinterest.

3.) No more thoughts about breaking up.  This one is entirely me...  During the year that Matt and I dated, he thought of breaking things off with me ONCE. That's it, just once. Incredible.  Being the heartless person I can be, I can honestly say that I thought about breaking it up with him many, many times - typically after a fight or I felt like I wasn't getting enough attention.  When I married Matt, I pretty much said, "This is it Shanette.  Either it works or you make it work." No more thoughts about "breaking it off" with Matt.  Some may say this is a con to being married, but in my opinion its a most definite pro.  I know that no matter how bad things may get, both of us are willing to sit down and work it out.  There's no going back on this and there is no end to our relationship.

4.)  Sex.  Ok, don't freak out!  I won't go into explicit detail, but just know that it's good. Really, really good.  There are so many health benefits to having sex - better blood pressure, less stress, better sleep, smaller chance of prostate cancer - and so much more.  It's such a wonderful thing that gets degraded WAY too much and people just need to calm down about it.  I used to think that there was only one kind of sex - that lustful kind, ya know, that kind that you see in all the movies  where people can't keep their hands to themselves because the other is so dang hott (like Matt is).  Well I was wrong.  There's another kind of sex that is more mental than physical and we have it just to feel close to each other. It's wonderful. Like, I just can't put it into words.  Sex is good my friends.

There are so many other things that I could write about but these are the truly wonderful things about being married that I love and I know that you have a life you need to get back to so I'll wrap things up.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to get married at such a young age and I'm so happy that I get to spend the rest of my life with Matt.  Please know that it's not always sunshine and daisies for us though, because we do fight, in fact ALL the time, but we fight for each other even more than we fight with each other and that's what keeps us together. I'm sure that if Matt and I were to make a Pro/Con list for the other, his list would have many more cons than pros.  All in all, I couldn't be happier.  Perhaps all the frustrations I had while being engaged were worth for what I got in the end. I love you Matt.