I decided this blog post was going to be unfitness related so everyone can get to know me a little bit better and how my family life is. I want to go into detail on my marriage and things that help us get along, make time for each other and become the best of friends. I will also include struggles that we have faced. We have only been married a short time but maybe this will help newlyweds or soon to be married couples!

A little back story on our journey to marriage, most don’t know this but we met on tinder only 3 years ago. YES tinder the “hookup app” judge us all you want but it gave us so much happiness and joy and I wouldn’t change the way we met for anything. So with that being said we only dated 6 months before we got engaged and a month after that I got pregnant with our now 2 year old. So already our whole journey isn’t what most would call normal but it has worked so well for us. So after we got engaged we had a date set and a wedding planned out until we found out we were having a baby so things ended up changing and our big wedding turned into a small intimate wedding and it was the best choice we had made (I will post a wedding story in the future) but I was 4 months pregnant when we got married. So you can see how that alone could challenge a new marriage to the extreme. This whole thing made us stronger as a couple.

I would say the first year of marriage was a complete rollercoaster and sometimes I’m unsure how we made it but we did. We bought our first house shortly before our son was born (June I believe) then on the best day ever in July our son was born and lord have mercy that was HARDER THAN I THOUGHT. Y’all having a baby is hard enough much less for a newly wed couple that had only really got to know each other for a little over a year. PHEW we had to not only learn to be married but how to take care of a brand new life… what the heck were we thinking? We argued about sleep, who was more tired, who worked harder, parenting, literally everything in the book but looking back today those hard moments made us stronger and better friends.

Now fast forward a little less than a year after we had our son we turned around and sold our first home, sold our jeep, and built a brand new home together. To this day and probably for a while that was the most stressful process EVER which I will also blog about in the future because home building deserves a blog because WOW never knew it would test our marriage that hard. We spent 3 months with my parents and although I adore my parents and Lincoln LOVED it. You could see how uncomfortable it may be for my husband SO that brought a lot of conflict to us once again but we came out on top of this one as well. After some financial struggles in purchasing our home, we finally moved in on September 5^th of 2019.

This is just a little back story on the first 2 years of marriage and I did forget to mention that I dropped from full time to part time AND my husband works 80 hours a week so holy crap parenting a newborn without my husband home was INSANE but another thing that made us better together. So what I’m trying to say is that marriage is WAY WAY WAY different than dating. I don’t want to go into to much detail but just know struggles happen and they do make you stronger! Below I have a list of some things that cause struggles and how to come out on top!

1. Finances, you have to combine those and it took us both a while to get used to that and somedays it can still be a challenge so we are on the up and up. Make sure you talk about big purchases and be on the same page about spending.
2. Raising babies, you have to put your marriage first or you will feel resentful towards your spouse and that’s just stressful because you need to work as a team or you won’t make it. Sleep deprivation and putting your marriage last will cause a struggle.
3. HAVE DATE NIGHT. In the beginning of parenthood we didn’t go out together as much as we should but thanks to my parents we get to go out at least once a month and it helps us reconnect with each other and build our marriage.
4. SUPPORT each other. My husband is the best at this, whatever my dream is he shares it with me. He doesn’t care what I do, how much money I make, or if my dream might fail. He is my biggest support and I love him for that.
5.  FORGIVENESS, this is one that I have to work on. You can’t continue to let past issues come up in your future together or you will continue to have the same fights.

I hope this helped you see everyone has struggles but to make a marriage work you have to be positive and work on your differences. I LOVE being married, its one of my greatest joys!

XOXO

Nichole