Love, Evolved: The Seasons of Marriage and What Endures

We got married when I was 19.
We were babies. Full of dreams, stubbornness, chemistry, and a shared hope that love would be enough to carry us through.
In some ways, it was.
In other ways, we had to keep learning what love actually meant — not just at the altar, but in the decades that followed.

The Seasons No One Talks About

There have been seasons where we were best friends.
Seasons where we were strangers in the same house.
Seasons where the only thing holding us together was the memory of a promise and the hope that we’d find each other again.

There were years of babies and sleep deprivation.
Years where we couldn’t hear each other over the noise of life.
Years where we had to fight for softness. And sometimes, we forgot how.

And then, something shifted.

Aging Changed Everything

We’ve always known love as something that grew alongside us.
But aging made it… sharper.
Clearer.
More sacred.

Especially when my husband’s health began to change.
Especially when he began to lose his sight.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just his partner — I was his caregiver.
Not in a romantic movie kind of way, but in the way where love gets tested and remade.

Love became appointments. Advocacy. Reading small print. Catching him when the stairs were unforgiving.
It became quiet moments where no words were needed — just presence. Just being there. Just stillness.

Love, Beyond the Physical

Nobody prepares you for how love shifts as our bodies change.
We don’t talk enough about what intimacy looks like when the passion cools and the comfort deepens.

It’s not worse. It’s different.

It’s holding hands in the quiet.
It’s shared glances across a room you’ve both aged in.
It’s sitting together in a world that doesn’t feel built for softness — and still choosing kindness, even when it’s hard.

It’s not always fireworks.
But it’s warm. Steady. Sacred.

I Would Still Choose Him

Not because it’s always been easy.
But because it’s been real.
Because every version of us has taught me something.

Because this man — even in uncertainty, even in vulnerability — is still the one I want to walk home with.

This Week Marks 31 Years

In just a few days, we’ll celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary.
Not with grand gestures or candlelit dinners — but in the quiet, familiar ways that love shows up now.
A shared laugh. A long hug. Maybe a few tears of gratitude.

Because we’ve lived a lot of life between “I do” and now.
And somehow, here we are — still choosing. Still learning. Still loving, differently, but deeper.

If You’re in a Hard Season…

You’re not alone.
Marriage isn’t a straight line.

And staying in love means learning how to evolve — again and again — through kids, through loss, through aging, through new versions of self.

This season of love might not look like the beginning.
But it might just be the most honest one yet.

With love,
Brandy