three out of six: love and married life

I heard someone today say that once you get married everything changes because of money, kids, etc… I can’t even remember the list. I sat quietly and thought of my relationship with Tony and tried to reflect on how our relationship has changed. I came to the conclusion that yes, our relationship has changed but for the better. I feel our love just gets stronger and stronger…you may say this is cheesy, but I am being honest. We have become a family and we both appreciate what each has to offer. In terms of money, we both decided to have one joint account (*everyone gasps*). There are some that think that they are losing their independence if they have a shared account and so they choose to keep individual accounts and pay a percentage of the bills. Whatever option works for your relationship is fine, but for us we decided that having a joint account makes life easier for both. Actually, this helps us feel more like a unit and allows us to make decisions that are best for the family as a whole. What I love best about our married life is that we have goals for the family (besides our own individual goals). Our short-term goal is to pay off all our debt (minus the mortgage) in 3 years to be able to achieve our long-term goal of purchasing a bigger house in Berkeley. Tony and I get so excited to see our debt number decrease with every paycheck we get and we can’t wait for it to reach ZERO.

But back to married life, I have been married for a year and 2 months now and I have to say I love being married and love being Mrs. Avila. It can be a little challenging that most of my friends…virtually all, aren’t married. They spend their free time going to clubs, dating…pretty much going where the wind takes them. It is fun but I have to say that I am done living my life that way. Actually, getting married did not create the idea that I am now chained to a life of homemaker. I am still very free to travel, to do what I want to do in life. Tony supports me in every decision I make. I will say that my mentality has changed though; I now make decisions that are best for the two of us and not just for me. It feels nice to think that we have started our own little family unit.