… I mean, probably? I’m sure there are way snarkier people out there. I just figured I’d give a heads up. Anyway …

Imagine that you want to know how old I am. So you ask:

“How old are you?”

Now, imagine that I answer your question like this:

“I’m 34 years old. Since graduating high school.”

Obviously, you’d be all:

“Holdup. You’re 34 … since high school?”

And I would reply:

“Yes, exactly. It’s been 34 years since I graduated high school.”

So then, you would have to do the math to figure out how old I am since birth, and you would — very rightfully — get super annoyed with me, because I didn’t actually tell you how old I am. I only told you how old I am since high school.

We can all agree that that’s a ridiculous way to answer the question of how old we are, right?

Well, this is basically how I feel about the question, “How long have you been married?”

For the record, today is Melissa’s and my 10-year wedding anniversary!

Holy shit! We’ve been married 10 years.

Except … what’s far more significant — at least to me — is that we’ve been together for almost 15 years. This December 7th, a little more than two months from now, will be the 15th anniversary of our first date. This December 7th will be exactly 15 years since we met for the first time.

When people ask us how long we’ve been married, the underlying curiosity is to know how long we’ve been together, how long we’ve been building this relationship, how long it took us to get to where we are. And so, saying how many years we’ve been married misses the entire start of our relationship. A start that matters so much.

Marriage is the high school graduation of a relationship. Just like graduating high school in life, graduating to marriage in a relationship is only a milestone, and we certainly hope said life/relationship will continue for decades more after said milestone.

My life didn’t start at my high school graduation. Similarly, our relationship didn’t start at our marriage.

To belabor the metaphor even more, some people never graduate from high school, and yet, they still lead amazing, fruitful lives. Similarly, some people never get married, and yet, they still find amazing, fruitful relationships.

Sure, wedding anniversaries are meaningful. And we’re definitely going to be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of being married.

But what we celebrate every single day is our almost-15 years now — and counting — of being together.

That, to me, is what matters most.

Happy 10 years since the graduation of our relationship, Melissa. But really, happy almost-15 years. I love you.

By the way, if you’d like to visit (or relive) our epic three-day wedding celebration, our wedding site is still up, and you can find it here. Or check out the most ridiculous two minutes of our wedding ceremony here. Or if you really want to do a deep dive, here are Facebook albums of Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening (ceremony and reception), our wedding photo booth, and Sunday (the aftermath). And just to show off, this is what we did to get ready for the wedding (ensuing photo shoot here).