Step by Step Parenting

As someone who got married for the first time at only nineteen, divorced by twenty-two, and recently remarried again, I have been on the receiving end of lots of unsolicited (but still sometimes appreciated) marriage advice.

There’s always the classic, “Marriage is 50/50,” and “Never go to bed mad,” but through it all, the most overlooked yet valuable piece of advice I have ever received is to marry your best friend.

When I dated people during high school and college, the story was generally the same: I would meet a guy, one of us realized we liked the other, one of us would pursue it, and ta-da, we would end up dating. True to my personality, every relationship that I ended up in was part of a plan that I had made up in my head (“Mastermind,” by Taylor Swift, anybody?).

But when I met my now-husband, there was no such plan, as neither of us were looking for a relationship. I had just started my first job since having my daughter two years prior, and was elated to simply be out of the house. He had just made the jump into a career field he was hoping would make him happier after nearly a decade of monotony. Between kids, school, and busy lives, it’s safe to say that a new relationship wasn’t on either of our radars.

Instead, we became good friends. We realized we both loved to read, run, and spend time outside. We discovered that our kids were close in age to each other. We happened to like the same TV shows, foods, and music. We could talk for hours about religion and politics and anything else under the sun. By the time we went on our first date around eight months after meeting, the butterflies were there, but it also felt like I was just hanging out with my best friend. Suddenly, the cliched advice to date your best friend made so much more sense.

Being in a relationship with my best friend brought a level of comfort and trust that I had never experienced before. Yes, we were in love and there was chemistry, but we also just understood each other in a way that only best friends can. I knew what he was thinking, and he got my sense of humor. He knew how to cheer me up, and we both knew how to talk through anything on our minds. We didn’t have that uncertain figuring-each-other-out phase, because we had already been friends for awhile. This meant that by the time we did start dating, we were ready to hit the ground running.

We dated for a year and a half before getting engaged, and then got married seven months later. During that time, we enjoyed being best friends in addition to dating. We called each other any chance we could, and spent so much time laughing together that time just seemed to fly by. But it wasn’t until we actually got married that I began to see the real benefit to marrying your best friend. While we were dating, being best friends made the relationship more fun. Once we got married, though, I realized it also made the relationship stronger.

We got married on April 13th, 2025. It was a beautiful spring day and everything went perfectly. It truly felt like it was straight out of a fairytale. Then, near the end of June, I found out that I was pregnant. We were overjoyed at the good news, but I was also very nervous. My first pregnancy had been extremely difficult for me, and I felt like I withered away into a shell of myself. I didn’t feel like myself for several years after finding out that I was pregnant with my first, and I didn’t want that to happen again. Despite obviously knowing that my new husband was in love with me, a tiny part of me worried that maybe seeing who I turned into while pregnant and postpartum would change his mind, or make him think differently of me.

And honestly, our relationship did change once I was pregnant, and pretty dramatically. We went from a couple who was training for ultramarathons together, going trail running and hiking on the weekends, enjoying at least one date night a week, cooking meals together, and more, to… well… I was completely bedridden. I didn’t even feel like we were a couple anymore, but that he was Kevin and I was a burden. Prior to pregnancy, I juggled law school and parenting with all of my hobbies and running the household. I prided myself on how independent, self-sufficient, and high-achieving I was.

Pride cometh before the fall, though. By the time I was eight weeks pregnant, I could barely walk from my bed to the kitchen and back. When my husband left for work in the morning and returned seven or eight hours later, I was often in the exact same spot. If it wasn’t for my husband, I don’t think I would have eaten real food, showered, or left the house for the first several months of pregnancy.

For months, our relationship looked nothing like it had before. There were no trail runs, no spontaneous adventures, and very few date nights. Most days, my contribution to the household was simply surviving and growing two humans. I couldn’t be the version of myself that I was used to being, and that was incredibly difficult for me.

But through it all, my husband never made me feel like a burden. Far from it.

He sat beside me while I complained for the hundredth time about being sick. He brought me food when I couldn’t stomach the thought of opening the fridge, much less getting out of bed. He picked up the slack without keeping score, and he never acted like my struggles were an inconvenience to him. Looking back, I think that’s where the friendship mattered most. He didn’t just love me; he genuinely enjoyed being around me, even when I wasn’t much fun to be around.

Somewhere between the endless doctor’s appointments, the sleepless nights, and the complete upheaval of our normal routine, I realized that I hadn’t just married someone I was in love with. I had married my best friend.

Being in love is great, but when the honeymoon phase ends and life’s challenges inevitably come creeping in, a strong foundation in friendship is almost more important.

Our friendship means that we can lean on each other when parenting feels overwhelming or when one of us has a bad day. Our friendship means that the inconveniences of life feel like an inside joke that you can’t help but laugh at. Our friendship means that it doesn’t matter if we’re both sleep deprived, haven’t showered in days, and still in our pajamas by 7:00pm, because we’ll still find a way to have a good time.

Marriage is made up of far more ordinary days than extraordinary ones. Most of life is spent folding laundry, paying bills, loading the dishwasher, sitting in waiting rooms, and navigating whatever challenge happens to be in front of you at the moment.

Physical attraction matters. Shared goals matter. Love matters. But friendship is what carries you through the seasons when everything else feels hard.

Maybe that’s why “marry your best friend” remains the most valuable marriage advice I’ve ever received. Because when life inevitably changes, when circumstances force you to become different versions of yourselves, and when the fairytale moments fade into everyday life, you’ll still have someone you genuinely enjoy doing life with.

And in my experience, that’s what makes all the difference.