December 7, 2021 marked 3 years that my husband, Shakimo and I have been married.
Year 3 was a tough year for us (not shocking at all).
On top of a pandemic, medical school, growing a business, and living in a multigenerational home, we experienced the growing pains that come with entering our late twenties, and our marriage being so young.
But, just like the year before, we conquered everything that came our way. And we did it together.
Last year, I recorded our annual anniversary interview and turned it into a blog post (You can read it here). Hubby and I both felt good about it, so we decided to do it again this year.
Read more about what we learned in our 3rd year of marriage and what we’re looking forward to in year 4.
Chelsea: You ready? So what have you learned in our 3rd year of marriage?
Shak: To listen. To know that I can't expect for things to be perfect. To accommodate you, to listen to how you feel and how all the things around us affect all aspects of you.
I learned that you continue to surprise me!
Chelsea: I do?! How?
Shak: With how much you push yourself with email marketing.
Chels: Really?
Shak: Yea. How you set goals for yourself for this year. And though, you didn't reach your goal...
Chels: Oh, I hit most of my goals,
Shak: I know! Even though you felt like you didn't do as much, I still felt that that was a huge win for yourself that you should definitely revel in.
Because it's not easy. Even setting one goal and blowing that out of the water is something to celebrate. So you should celebrate yourself more.You do a great job at what you do.
You feel that people don't recognize you because they're not paying you as much yet and don't have the long list of clientele. That comes in time. You keep working on what you have. You keep doing great with what you have and people will hear about you and be like, I have to have her on my team.
Chels: You is right! Now ask me what I learned.
Shak: What did you learn this year?
Chels: In this last year of marriage I learned, and I was journaling about this this morning.
So, when we first got married, I married you because I felt like I could share a life with you, but I realized that in order to get to the point where we have a life to share together, we have to build that life first.
So I feel like this last year of marriage was like another foundational year. So I feel like we will get to the point where we share life together, but we still have to build it.
And that was like something difficult that I had to kind of like...
Shak: ...to come to terms with?
Chels: Yea, to come to terms with. We'll get to a point where, you know, we have long stretches of happy times, when things will get more steady, but right now we're still building.
Let's see, what else did I learn?
I learned that patience is a virtue.
Shak: laughs
Chels: I already knew that, but it was just more lessons of being patient with you, with myself, with our relationship. There were several things that I thought would never happen, but slowly I started to see them happen.
Like the fact that you listen to me. And you kind of anticipate my needs. And things like emotional intimacy and emotional intelligence, like those are things that, early on in our relationship, weren’t apparent.
I feel like you've already always been in tune with me, but being able to verbalize it, not taking my feelings so hard on yourself, being willing to hear me out and not shutting down. Those are some things that came with time. If I was just more patient early on, I wouldn't have been so frustrated.
So on the interwebs, there's this debate about women teaching men how to love them. Have you seen this debate on the internet?
Shak: No.
Chels: So some women say, “If I have to teach a man how to love me, I don't want him, he doesn’t deserve me”. What do you think about that?
Shak: Well, I can understand the mindset. But I'm of the mindset of, you have to tell someone how to love you. It's different when you tell them how to love you and they do the complete opposite or do nothing that you tell them. That's a red flag.
Chels: Yeah.
Shak: Are you going to have to have patience for the person to learn how to love you? If he makes one mistake and it's not the way you want to be loved, are you going to look at him like, “Okay, we can’t do this”?
If that's your mindset, then you should've just told him from the beginning, “I like to be loved like this.” And ask “Can you provide that? Can you do that?”. If not, then its not worth it.
Chels: I agree.
Shak: It's all about you and your partner. But to me, I find it better just letting people know how you like to be loved.
Some people might look at it as like cutting corners,
Chels: What’s like cutting corners?
Shak: Telling the person how to love you instead of them learning about you. But the thing is, everybody learns at a different pace. Some people will pick up on things quickly. Some need some help to figure out things.
And I look at people like puzzles. Some people are very simple puzzles. They tell you straight up what they want and what they need, and you just gotta put the pieces together.
Other people, they’re like thousand piece puzzles, 10,000 piece puzzles that you have to take your time and patience to put them together. One by one to figure out where to start. Do I start on a corner? Do I start at the center? Do I start with what the picture may be? And it works differently for everyone
Chels: I agree. I agree with everything you’re saying. I do not agree with that school of thought. It goes back to this: On Summer Walker's new album, the song 4th Baby Mama she says, “I wanna start with your mama. She should've whooped your ass.”
Both: Laughs
Chels: When parents don't do their job in raising their sons with care, teaching them how to love themselves and others, and teaching them what to expect in a relationship, then the women who get with those men have a hard time with them. I think it comes down to having patience.
To say “Oh, if he can't love me right from the beginning, then he doesn't deserve me.” I don't really believe that.
You can be raised in the same house and have completely different thoughts about the same topic. So I don't think that it's fair to have that school of thought.
I know for me personally, like I definitely had to teach you how to love me and it's not because you're a bad man or you weren't raised right. It's just that. I want to be loved in a specific way.
And you definitely rose to the occasion in loving me the way that I need to be loved. From the beginning, you've always been very attentive. You always listen to me when I say I don't like something, or when I say I need something. You have always risen to the occasion and done your best to give me what I need. I appreciate that.
But if I had that school of thought of ‘if I have to teach you how to love me, then I don't want you’ then I wouldn't be with the love of my life right now. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to marry someone who truly loves me. So I feel sorry for any woman that has that mentality because you really could be missing out on somebody that could be great for you.
Have a little patience. Say what you need. No one can read your mind.No one is going to just come out of the gate with all the right answers. And if they do, they're going to get it wrong at some point. So you have to be willing to be flexible, be patient and communicate.
Chels: So, would you say you had to teach me how to love you?
Shak: I don't think so. I think that you've been very attentive to what I need, to be there for me every time I turn around. And even when you don't know, you always ask, which I always appreciate.
Chels: I think we are like the different puzzles that you described.
I came in telling you what pieces to put together. I've gotten better at it over time. I tell you exactly how to love me. But for you, on the other hand, I feel like I just had to learn how to love you.
Shak: laughs. Yea I don't really talk to begin with.
Chels: Yea. You don't tell me how to love you, but I've definitely had to learn how to love you. Like learning how to anticipate your needs and more than your physical needs, your emotional needs as well.
So knowing when to say things, when to not say things or to bring topics up, how to preface the difficult topics, things like that. So, I've definitely had to learn how to love you.
Chels: So what is an area you think we need to work on in the next year of marriage in year three?
Shak: hmmm...I'm trying to think
Chels: I'll start. I think we need to work on getting better with our finances.
Shak: Yes.
Chels: I think that in the next phase of our lives, like we're coming up on some big milestones that will bring about things that we haven't really had to focus on in the last few years.
Shak: Yeah.
Chels: And I think that will require some financial discipline.
So I think that that's something that we need to work on going into year four. I think it's better if we work on it now, while we don't have any financial pressures, than to be struggling when those pressures come.
Shak: I agree
Chels: Last question. What do you see for the future? What do you see in the next year for us?
Shak: I see us continuing to grow towards each other, learning more and more about each other, even though we’re going into your four we’re still learning a lot about each other. I can't wait to keep learning about you spending more time with you and having you here with me on my journey.
Chels: Ditto!
Both: *Kiss*
Chels: Thank you! This was a good interview.
Shak: Thank you so much. Be sure to contact my rep.
Both: Laughs
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