As mentioned in my previous post my best friend of over 20 years is getting married in a weeks time to her long time boyfriend. This topic has got me thinking about my own marriage and what it takes to make a relationship successful and really, what does a successful relationship even mean?

Geoff and I have been together for 10 years now, married for eight and fought hard & ugly for the first couple of years. There was a point where I thought our marriage was going to end and I wasn't sure if we'd ever get past it. We don't have kids (more on that at a later time) but we have two amazing cats that are part of our little family, funny since neither of us were "cat people" when we adopted our first. 

But back to the first few years of marriage. Without getting into too much detail and respecting our privacy I'll tell you that in hindsight we were fighting about everything a newly married couple might fight about - meddling family members, chores, how to spilt up the holidays, where to hang the art work, money, laundry, our different personalities, groceries, and so on. You name it and it was probably a point of contention for us. 

We'd already been living together for a year before we got married but after the wedding every part of our normal day to day lives seemed so much more forced and suddenly we weren't meshing.  The tension in our marriage but so bad that I found myself looking for apartments one day and that's when it occurred to me, I didn't want to live in my own shitty apartment, I wanted to live with Geoff and follow through with the commitment we had made.

After that we sat down and had a good long talk about why we were so upset with each other and what we were going to do to move forward. Getting to the point of being honest wasn't easy but it was necessary and it helped us mend our marriage and now I'm happy to say we're rock solid.

As Geoff and I near 9 years of marriage I can tell you from my personal experience what makes a relationship successful:

Forgiveness.
Acceptance.
Honesty.
Humour.
Respect. (This is a big one people!)

Even now we're still figuring things out as we grow. Geoff still annoys me and I annoy him but we laugh off the small stuff. Our love and respect for each other outweighs everything. I'm thankful to have him as my partner because he is truly an amazing person and I can't imagine my life without him.

SHOP MY LOOK

I'm wearing: Mackage winter coat, H&M knit, old Banana Republic jeans, Town Shoes boots, Ray Ban aviators. 

SHOP MY WINTER BOOTS @TOWNSHOES

Pajar Alice boots with red plaid detail from Town Shoes.

This post is sponsored by Town Shoes. All photos and opinion are my own.