You CAN Meet Your Spouse in a Bar: My Ten Year Wedding Anniversary

My favorite moment with my husband is when, about one week into dating, I called him on his cell phone, and when he answered, all I said was, “Come get me.” And he hung up and appeared in my driveway about ten minutes later in his black Chevy truck, ready to take me wherever I wanted to go. I love that there were hardly any words—just faith.

I don’t think anyone thought we would make it this far, me and the Hubs. And why would they? I was fresh out of a three-year relationship, and the Hubs’ main appeal for me at the time was that, being from Peru, he was exotic.  

Plus I met him at a bar, for God’s sake. You can’t meet your spouse in a bar.

Well, the Hubs and I have been married ten years now, so you can too meet your spouse in a bar. Ha!

It was this bar that had a salsa night every Monday. We were both in the first few weeks of our graduate studies. I danced several times with the Hubs, not giving him or anyone else I danced with a second thought. I didn’t care who I danced with, as long as they would spin me a whole bunch. Plus, I had a boyfriend—long distance—doing his grad work across the state. I didn’t love my boyfriend, but I was too much of a wuss to break his heart, so I kept being a heartless scaredy-cat and was just stringing him along. I know, horrible.  

The Hubs and I wound up in the same group of friends, though I wasn’t close with him. But he was the center of our social circle. If you wanted to know what was going on that night, he was the one you called. (It also helped that he was the only one of us with a cell phone back then.) He flirted with me sometimes, but kept his distance because of my ‘boyfriend.’

After the holidays that school year, I had a dream about him. I can’t believe it, but now I cannot remember what it was about! It was something intense but not sexual, that’s all I remember. That dream meant something to me; it made my heart race in that way that it’s supposed to race when a heart is immersed in burgeoning love, even though I didn’t really know the Hubs all that well at the time. The next time I saw him, I told him about the dream. After that we were like magnets being drawn toward one another. I finally grew some balls and broke up with my boyfriend.

Eight months later, the Hubs and I were married in our apartment by this weird biker-dude (he was the cheapest option and we were on a ramen-noodle budget), surrounded by friends, and with my mom listening in on a cell-phone.

Everyone thought we were getting married so he could get a green card. I guess in a way we were, because he was about to graduate, which meant he would either have to find a company to sponsor him for a work visa, stay and get a PhD, or… leave. The first two weren’t viable options, and the third, well… I couldn’t have that.

Anyway, we were one of those annoying couples who talk about getting married about two weeks into dating. Neither of us had ever done that in a previous relationship. We were inseparable.

We did our weird little marriage ceremony in our apartment, and a year-and-a-half later we flew some of my family down to Peru and had a real wedding, in a big beautiful cathedral. I felt like a movie star because all the locals were crowding around the entrance of the church trying to get pictures of “the American girl who is marrying the boy who left for the United States and got a masters degree and has a job there now.” The very long traditional Catholic ceremony was followed by an incredible reception that lasted until six in the morning.

It was my own personal fairytale.

It’s been ten years now. We have two kids, a dog, a house, lots of responsibilities, as all parents have. And HOLY CRAP. TEN FREAKING YEARS! Shouldn’t we be completely bored with one another by now? But we’re not. We’re annoyingly happy. Love-note happy.

About three years into our marriage, I struggled. Something felt wrong; I felt an antipathy towards my husband that at times bordered on disgust. Mainly because I wanted him to change his ways. He was absent-minded and slovenly, didn’t pick up after himself or help me around the house as much as I felt he should. It drove me crazy.

And I became a naggy bitch, something I had vowed I would never become. At times, I didn’t like him very much, and I most definitely didn’t like who I was becoming. He never seemed to doubt us, though, and that brought me even more frustration. We would have an argument and I would still be fuming and he would be wandering around the house whistling like Steamboat Willie. Didn’t he understand the gravity of the situation???

I found one of Dr. Phil’s self-help books on marriage at a thrift store and was sure it was serendipity that I had stumbled across it. I delved into it with a notebook and pen to take notes on all the ways I could make the Hubs fix himself. But stupid Dr. Phil made the whole book about how you’re supposed to fix yourself, and your spouse will react to your positive changes. Idiot. I kept thinking, Well what if no matter what I do, my husband still doesn’t change into the person I expect him to be?

I quit the book about halfway through, annoyed with Dr. Phil’s condescending tone. Nevertheless, a new little naggy voice appeared in the back of my head, questioning my every thought and accusation directed towards the Hubs. I began to see that although perhaps there was some rudeness on his part for being a slob, it was inadvertent. And I had faults that I had previously been unwilling to recognize; being a sarcastic bitch to my husband being the main culprit. This was not the way to get what I wanted from him. This was not the way to be a wife.

Over the years, through much bickering and many fights, we have come to a place where we function in a respectful way with one another. Whereas I didn’t before, I now trust that his intentions are always good. He has always believed this of me, and because of that, has always been instantly forgiving and never grudgeful. It is the reason he can exit a heated argument whistling an annoyingly upbeat tune. He trusts that we are going to be fine because neither of us has any truly ill intentions.    

I once asked my aunt, who is in her sixties, how she and my uncle have managed to stay together for so long. She said, as if it were obvious, “Well, we just never both wanted a divorce at the same time!” It made me think of how, when I carried anger and resentment toward my husband, he carried the marriage.

I have a deep and profound trust of my husband’s love for me. He feels like more than just a guy I fell in love with and got married to. He even feels like more than family. I feel like we are connected by an unbreakable cosmic string, by our love, by our shared experiences, by our belief that we were ‘meant to be,’ and by the two lives that we’ve brought into this world to share our journey. But if he ever has misgivings about the strength of our love, if I ever catch him reading a self-help book on marriage, I only hope that I can be half the person that he was, and show him, as he did me, that when it comes to us, there is no room for doubt. Only faith.

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