Once when I was little, I asked my mom who her best friend was. Without skipping a beat, she quickly answered, “Daddy!” I remember rolling my eyes and telling her to be serious. I thought she was giving me an oddly generic answer. Plus, how could you be best friends with a boy? Boys were hyper, loud, smelly, and dirty.* Who would want to be friends with one?
As I watched my parents over the years, I realized my mom was serious. Yes, they’re romantic and cutesy, but they laugh together and are really goofy. They can finish each other sentences and know each other better than anyone else.
As I got older, boys weren’t always hyper. As I began friendships with them, I realized they weren’t always so smelly. Or dirty. Or loud. Once I started these large realizations, I realized I wanted to marry someone I would most definitely call my best friend. Without meaning to (or articulating it my head), I had made up a rule that you had to be friends for at least a year before you even liked whoever you were going to marry in order to marry your best friend.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” If that’s true, I’m sure He was laughing hysterically.
One thing I’ve learned is when you’re dealing with anything important in life that’s divinely inspired, God’s Law is always the exception to the human rule you’ve made in your head.
Most people know the story of my meeting my husband, Jake. We met on August 21, 2010 and began dating 3 days later. The day we began dating, I remember we had just talked about being in a relationship before Jake used a sentence that required him to call himself my boyfriend. I remember my stomach doing a little flip-flop. Weren’t boys supposed to be timid and wait months before referring to themselves as a boyfriend?
To top it off, he gave me a big hug and said, “You know we’re getting married, right?”
I knew that unlike my last sarcastic boyfriend, Jake meant it. What was both extremely exciting and slightly terrifying to me was that I knew he was right.
I waited the longest 10 seconds of Jake’s life before saying, “Yup. I know…”
With that, we talked about marriage ALL.THE.TIME. Did I mention our relationship was long-distance on top of it?
By October, we had discussed and picked a wedding date: February 11, 2012. This later got changed since it worked better for the venue wanted and what was going on in our lives in general. We actually got married a month earlier on January 14.
In November, Jake flew to Houston to spend two weeks with my parents, my brother, and me. It also fell over Thanksgiving.
In December, I flew to see Jake to spend Christmas with him, his parents, and his brother. I stayed for a week.
Next we spent 5 months apart. Though we had been told that long-distance was death to even the best of relationships, we ignored it. We talked on the phone every day. Without the physical quotient of our relationship, friendship was really all we had and what we focused on. I think we both knew that if we began focusing on what we didn’t have, it wouldn’t be good or fair to either one of us. Plus, whenever one of us (let’s be real, this was always me) began to have trouble with not seeing the other, we would talk about it until the other felt peaceful.
During all of this time, Jake quickly became my best friend. He was the one I couldn’t wait to talk to at the end of the day. On top of it, though wedding planning was fun and I was excited for a big day, I really just wanted to get to the good stuff that comes after the wedding. I just wanted normal everyday life to begin. I knew there were people that thought we were too young and naïve to realize that marriage was work and thought were crazy to get married when we only knew each other from afar.
How did we really know each other? How were we sure we’d found “The One” in each other? Weren’t we a little young? Why did we have to get married now?
During the 11 months that we were long distance, we got to know each other really well. On top of talking on the phone, we also Skyped a lot. Actually when we skyped, it was often for hours and hours on end. I would carry my computer around while I did seemingly mundane things like laundry and making dinner, and for the most part, it bridged the gap of feeling like our relationship was long-distance. I know most people would freak out over lack of the physical in a romantic relationship, but it just wasn’t a big deal. We couldn’t wait to share our days with each other and I always looked forward to each moment we got to spend together.
As far as how quickly we got married and why we had to get married NOW, I can best relate it to the famous line in When Harry Met Sally: When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Actually, even though we were looking forward to our wedding, we had talked about eloping, not telling anyone, and having the wedding anyway. We didn’t tell anyone that, but my mom somehow figured it out by how I was talking about Jake. Right around the time we had talked about it, she sat me down, and said, “I don’t care if you elope, but don’t you dare get married without letting your families see it. I don’t care: we’ll skip the wedding, Dad and I and the Lowes will watch it wherever. Just don’t get married without our being able to see it.”
We quickly decided against a secret elopement. It also helped me realize that having a ceremony is gratitude to those who have helped guide and shape you into the person you are; the person who should be marrying the spectacular person who is about to become your spouse.
Right around the time Jake proposed, I realized how quickly he had become my best friend. I thought about my “rule” about being friends first in order to marry your best friend in order to avoid getting married out of lust in order to avoid divorce.
…and that’s when it hit me: Love has no formula.
There’s really no formula to how you become friends with anyone. It just happens. It happens when you’re not looking, not planning, and not asking for it. It falls in your lap.
Honestly, I think even for those who actively look for their spouse online and are on specific dating sites, the person you end up marrying isn’t necessarily the person you always pictured growing up. In the end, that doesn’t matter.
I thought I would marry someone who was older and tall with straight, blonde hair (and the complexion to go with it). The man I married is younger, average height, and the half-black side of his family means he has beautiful tangle of black curls on top of his handsome head.
I also was never attracted to guys with big muscles and classically handsome face. I was convinced these men were “out of my league”** and that it was a recipe for someone who wanted arm candy and had a big, selfish ego. My husband, who was one of the top high school wrestlers in his state and could have gone to college in a full scholarship for it, thought football practice was easy, still has nice-sized biceps even though he never goes to the gym and though he doesn’t at the moment, when we met he had a lovely 8-pack. His face is also pretty nice to look at. On top of it, though he loves when we go somewhere we have to dress up, he once begged me to buy sweat pants, he favors my hair in a “don’t care” ponytail and if you read my second post on this blog, you already know how humble he is. This is not to brag, it’s just to say he’s not what I was expecting.
The point of all of that: those weird rules you make about how your spouse is supposed to be, look, act, etc. don’t really matter. How he/she treats you is paramount, and what kind of person he/she is tends to be pretty important, but beyond that, the friendship quotient of your relationship is one of the key ingredients to a good life together.
The best friend is the glue, if you will, that holds it all together. It’s what makes the everyday fun and the not-so-fun bearable. You would think it’s the romance that does all of this, but it’s really the goofy/everyday that makes it all worth it. Can someone send this to all the contestants on The Bachelor?
I know I write on how grateful I am for my marriage a LOT, but my mom was truly right when she told me it would be the best or worst thing I ever did. I’m pretty grateful that it was the best. Honestly, spending everyday with your BFF is the best anyone could ever ask for, and I’m pretty grateful for mine.
*Not all the time, but my husband is all of those things… #oops
**Note: If you’re reading this as a single person, don’t EVER tell yourself someone is out of your league. It’s a recipe for disaster. Know that you’re whole, complete, and spectacular and at some point, someone fantastic is going to be thanking God that He’s put you in his or her life.
