THREAD: This photo came across my Facebook memories from eight years ago today and I wanted to share a bit about it.

We had been married a year or so, together for over two. We had a super whirlwind amazing romance. This photo was taken almost exactly two years earlier.

I spent the year living in Cambodia and left dating Seth’s best friend but actually quite in love with Seth himself. Eventually, it all came out and we began dating while I was quite literally half a world away. He risked (and lost) not just the best friend, but all his friends.

So fast forward, we moved to DC together for the year and I converted and we were offered jobs at Commentary in New York and we moved back to NYC. Along the way, we had an absolute breakdown in communication and respect. To this day, not sure what happened.

We came from very different upbringings and we fought and communicated very differently. It led to us in a not great space. When that picture was taken eight years ago, we had gone to a baseball game with some of my inlaws at yankee stadium.

We were basically at that point not speaking to each other things were so bad. Thank god we worked together and it forced us to be decent and professional during the day, but it was super stressful and the opposite of happy.

I started walking around without my ring on when we weren’t together just to see what it felt like. I asked a good friend if I could stay with her if we ended up getting divorced.

I’m a child of divorce. We’re hard wired to nail when things get hard. He is not. As bad as things were, it just wasn’t an option. I was too poor to divorce him anyway. So we went to marriage counseling. (Which we were also too poor for and had to go to a place w sliding scale)

So the counselor had us rewind to when the breakdown in communication happened. She helped us work through fights we didn’t know we still carried with us. She helped us learn how to communicate so that a breakdown like that didn’t happen again.

And so, here we are eight years after that picture. Four kids, lots of moves and job changed. Still married. I’m really thankful to my husband for not giving up, to that counselor for giving us the tools to work through our shit, and to God that it’s all worked out.

A few weeks ago someone asked me if me and Seth ever had a bad patch and I thought I should be more honest about it. We are disgustingly in love now and have an amazing, romantic backstory. But things haven’t just been easy and peachy. Our marriage took work. I’m glad we did it.

Oh, and I showed Seth that picture yesterday and was like do you remember this? I was sitting there thinking I’d never see my in-laws again. He tells me, “Yeah, that was a fun game!”