Top 5 Reasons I’m Glad I Married My Husband

Today is my 15th wedding anniversary. Yikes. Fifteen years ago, Mike and I were living in Champaign, Illinois, where we married in a friend’s backyard in a simple, self-designed ceremony.

While marriage hasn’t always been easy, it has been an eye-opening and soul-stirring adventure. In honor of today, here are five very important husband qualities Mike possesses that have helped to make it work.

1. He’s open-minded.

   And agreeable to nearly everything I propose. Like changing our last name. Or moving to Rhode Island. Or co-sleeping. Not that I run the show, mind you, but our relationship has always been an equal one where we remain open to the possibilities in life instead of sticking to a pre-blazed path that doesn’t fit us. Even now, neither of us knows where life will take us next. Toward another country? Toward adoption? I love that we’re both flexible and adaptable to new ideas.

2. He shares my sense of adventure.

   You won’t find either of us bungee jumping off a cliff or signing up for Survivor. But we did relocate across the country to a new city sight unseen (twice). Luckily, our standards of adventure also seem to change together. For instance, ten years ago we backpacked through the Scottish Highlands and sought lodging the day we needed it. (And ended up in a huge fight in Stirling where we barely found a place due to a sold-out Proclaimers concert). Last year, on our anniversary trip to Italy, we agreed on the comfort and security of booking in advance.

3. He makes me laugh.

   And he thinks I’m funny. Which is seriously important. When we first met at work 20 years ago, I immediately gelled with his sarcastic and situational sense of humor. In our mid-twenties, we spent our Saturday mornings cracking up over Earthworm Jim. Today I love his playfulness and silliness with our daughter and the fact that Mike and I can carry on an entire conversation by trading movie lines.

4. He’s a feminist.

   See item #1 where I mentioned changing our last name. How many guys do that? I refused to take his name under the principle of not being his property. I didn’t want to keep separate names for the future problem of our children either having only his name or a hyphenated mess (e.g.: Sofie Cappiella-DeGuzman). So we created a name that combined elements from each of us. The “De” from his Filipino DeGuzman and “Forbes” from the Scottish clan of my maternal grandfather.

   Aside from that, Mike has a deep respect for women, their nurturing influence and compassionate wisdom. We once played a game in which the question was asked: “What one event in world history would you change?” Players privately wrote down answers that were later read aloud. We had to guess who had written each answer. In the midst of responses such as “the Holocaust” or “the election of George W. Bush,” two of us had come to the same conclusion: “When we changed from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one.” Ooh, I love him.

5. He made half of Sofie.

   And I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than that.