After 25 years and three kids, a trip helped me remember this about my husband

On the flight to New Zealand to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, I had a quiet and slightly embarrassing concern. What if we get bored?

I’d arranged a surprise getaway for my husband and me. Seven days alone together. No children, no work, no distractions. Just the two of us, after decades of our lives shared. What if, after all that time, we’d run out of things to say?

I didn’t mention this to my husband. But I did buy a pack of conversation cards for couples, much to his later amusement. Fortunately, they remained unopened for the entire trip. That small anxiety surprised me, but when I told a friend, she said it felt deeply relatable.

I can’t believe we’ve been married for a quarter of a century. It sounds enormous when you say it out loud. We married in 2000, which makes the maths easy and the milestones harder to ignore. What startles me most is the speed of it. Thousands of ordinary days stacked gently on top of one another, punctuated by moments that either reinforced or shifted our trajectory in big and small ways.

There are the obvious markers: our wedding, the births of our three children, career moves and relocations. But with hindsight, it’s the unremarkable moments that feel most significant. The ones that didn’t announce themselves as important at the time yet somehow fused together to form the fabric of our family life.

Our two sons and daughter are the most treasured and profound proof of our partnership’s success. Each of them embodies a part of us, and watching my husband father them has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.

He is the yin to my yang. He is calm and steady, thoughtful and gentle. Together, we have built a family, not Pollyanna-perfect, but one that feels grounded and secure, even as our children grow into young adults and begin to spread their wings.

Of course, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. No genuine marriages are. Anyone who claims otherwise is either very lucky or deeply dishonest. Of course, there have been tough times. Plenty. Whether it was in the early days of new parenthood, moving houses, work stresses, illnesses or the smaller but sometimes no less significant challenges of navigating a rental car in a foreign city, or a terse chat about whether the chicken has been cooked properly on the barbecue.

But those moments did not defeat us. It’s true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; it also helps that my husband has superhuman patience and a willingness not to sweat the small stuff. I’m not sure he could say the same about me. But once again, that’s the power of his yin to my yang. I’m the household organiser, the holder of passwords, the travel agent, the nurse, the tutor and the family taxi service, so he can afford to cut me some slack.

There is a quiet intimacy in being so well known that you can read each other’s moods just by posture. It’s about recognising when words are needed and when silence is the better choice. Even on our most distracted or tired days, there’s a baseline of care and respect that has never faltered.

I find myself attracted to the small, simple acts that mark our daily lives. They might seem minor to others, but to me they feel monumental.

After all these years, I love this man. And more than that, I still like him.

The cup of tea made just the way I like it in the morning: not too weak, not too strong. The hand that instinctively rests on my arm as we cross the road, alert and watchful for traffic. The shared look across a room when something absurd unfolds, a flicker of amusement or disbelief that belongs only to us. These are not romantic clichés; they’re the quiet currency of a long partnership.

We missed celebrating our 20th anniversary thanks to COVID-19, so for our 25th I decided we needed to mark it properly with a week in New Zealand, including four indulgent nights at Huka Lodge, a place better known for hosting royalty and rock stars than tired parents of three.

It was the longest uninterrupted stretch we’d spent alone together since having children. And far from boredom, the days felt expansive. We felt like we were 25 years younger, free from the push-and-pull of daily life. We talked, laughed, swam, drank, hiked, mountain biked, read and soaked in the spectacular scenery.

It reminded me of something that often gets lost in the minutiae of everyday life. After all these years, I love this man. And more than that, I still like him. He’s clever, funny, humble, sweet and generous-hearted.

As the intensity of child-raising eases and the constant logistic issues soften, space is opening again. For curiosity, conversation and thinking about who we are now, and how we want the next chapter to look.

We are, at heart, conservative souls, yet we’ve built a life that is anything but small. We’ve taken risks when it mattered, moved when it felt uncomfortable, and made choices guided as much by values as ambition.

Looking back, I think the most radical thing we’ve done is not chase perfection but commit to presence. Staying engaged with each other, even when life felt overwhelming or unglamorous.

Celebrating 25 years of marriage isn’t about nostalgia or sentimental slogans. It’s about recognising resilience, commitment and the daily decisions that rarely make headlines but ultimately define a life.

Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.