when casey [from chicago] and i started dating, he said he would never visit green bay, wi [my home town]. let’s just say … that would have been a deal-breaker in my pursuit of my third necessity [out of four] for happiness … a fulfilling relationship.

so how did a packers fan and a bears fan fall in love?

the packers keep winning, of course. or was it just a matter of casey attending a packer game with me? how about getting him to agree to help me remodel a house built out of the original stone from packer hotel?

ours has been a journey from rejection … to acceptance … not of each other’s football team but simply each other’s priorities.

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i’ve been completely overthinking this post. the very thing i was trying to avoid when starting a blog. but how do you not overthink the post about the person that changed your life?

my first reaction = joke about it. [ahem. see above]

my second reaction = second-guess everything. i’m cringing and grinning at the same time thinking about casey reading this for two reasons: he is my #1 cheerleader but also my biggest critic [in line behind myself, of course] … case and point: he’s asked a bajillion times how this post is going after learning what the topic would be.

my third reaction = be blatantly honest. relationships are work. casey and i haven’t made it easy on ourselves whatsoever [and i’m not just thinking about the two games a year the packers play the bears.]

it’s clear how important family and work are to my happiness. but it took me while to realize what that meant for him. i chose a man who actively resists my version of family and he chose a woman who would force him to confront that head on. it wasn’t good enough to simply appreciate those areas of my life. he needed to actively support them. and vice versa.

after 10 years together, we are still figuring things out. we have undoubtedly has to choose each other over and over again. that’s the fulfilling part and will be exemplified by the the stone house story.

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here’s a recap of our “relationship” …

• the adventure began as friends in chicago in 2009
• our first date was three months before casey flew the coop to st. louis for a new job (in 2010)
• after two years of dating long distance, i moved to the ‘lou
• we lived in the same city for a year
• then casey moved to washington d.c. for the summer [without me] and then returned to st. louis [only to pack up]
• in 2014, we migrated north for a year-and-a-half when casey chose the university of wi for grad school [HINT: closer to my family]
• we finally landed in our first home in st. louis just in time to get married 2016 – first in a st. louis court house and then on a bluff in tennessee

did you follow all of that?

yeah, i barely did either [literally] …

here’s a visual from our wedding program:

sharing our complicated stories has been our bond. it started with vastly opposite study abroad experiences in italy and grew from there. we both found a willingness to unload everything in our hearts [a.k.a. our baggage] with each other in a way that neither of us had done before.

sprinkle on two years of long distance, 100,000+ miles of road trips together [that’s a lot of hours trapped in a car talking], 50+ weddings attended [95% of which we closed down] and a willingness to go out in public wearing the same outfit [especially after casey found out that’s what couples do in korea] and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success.

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as for the “fulfilling” part …

i can sum it up with one video clip. the man who literally resisted the concept of family has it chasing him. and we’re both finally slowing down enough to let it catch up.

p.s. this video is not a perfectly lit or framed but holy moly does it make me smile.