Dear Jack,

We’ve almost made it! Just a few more days until we tie the knot and then we’ll be a married couple.

All of this waiting has made me stop and think about how we have changed and how many memories we have made together. Eight years is a long time-- a lot can and has happened. We’re not those fourteen year old kids who were super awkward around each other all the time. We’re still awkward, but at least we’ve learned to laugh about it instead of letting that weirdness fester.

At fourteen, you don’t really know who you are or where you’re going (much less with who you’re going with), or what you want. Not really. I don’t think fourteen-year-old Megan had a clue about anything. She knew at the beginning of freshman year that she wanted to find someone she could maybe call a significant other. Middle school crushes were fruitless and heart-breaking. But high school… this was like the turning point. Somehow in younger Megan’s brain, ninth grade was the magical elixir that made former eighth graders grow up and take action on their feelings. To a certain extent that’s true. It was for us.

Admittedly, I didn’t have it in my mind when we first got together that we would be together all through high school, all through college, and all for the rest of forever. I mean, I could barely think about what I wanted for breakfast the following morning. How could I even comprehend what forever with one person could look like? But the days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years… sure, we had some really hard moments. Moments where I thought we might not make it through because we were both so stressed and at a loss for what to do next and how to move forward. But somehow we did. We weathered the storm and we would go on to weather lots of different kinds of storms as we figured out what we wanted for our futures, even though those things differed slightly from each other. We worked it out as we both went off to our separate colleges and figured out how to keep seeing each other and how to handle the personal changes in mind and spirit that comes with earning an education. We weathered them again when I decided to move four thousand miles away for a semester to follow my dream of studying abroad.

Jack, you’ve taught me so much over all of these years. You have taught me what it means to be in a relationship with someone-- what I can give and what I can stand to gain as well. Love is a two-way street, they say, and we both have qualities to bring to the table to help make us better.

You’ve taught me that love requires work. I think that love can initially spark pretty easily, but in order to keep that initial spark alive, you have to attend to each other and make sure the other is doing okay.

You’ve taught me that it’s okay to go slow and that our pace doesn’t have to be the same pace as other couples around us. It’s okay to think critically about where we are in our relationship and decide for ourselves what we’re ready to take on next. There is no timeline but our own.

You’ve taught me how to show love in many different ways and validated that while our styles of showing love are different (love languages), they are both good. Once we know those styles, they can easily be understood and we can both let that love in and be better for it.

I love you very, very much and I am excited to spend the rest of my life with you!

Love,

Megan