Eleven Years of Togetherness and Going Strong

The Mafia couple, taken at 70's Bistro

On Aug. 14, 1999, after 12 days of courtship, I said my sweet yes to one of my best guy friends, Peter. I figured, we already know a lot about each other so why make the courtship long?

Before him, my ex courted me for twelve long years, had a relationship with him for four years and everything just went down the drain ...after college.

Then Peter came into the picture. He was my first crush back in freshman year. But I never thought he liked me too, until the day I broke up with my then long time boyfriend. Since then, we vowed to always stay true to each other in a non-conformist, non-traditional kind of way. Few people really understand the dynamic of our relationship. But we don't care. As long as we understand each other, as long as we love each other the way we do, there will always be us, just us two.

Just as I expected, we didn't have anything planned for our anniversary. Perhaps, the most exciting thing we did was watching the advance screening of The Expendables (thanks to Az!) and going to Brownman Revival's gig afterward.

with Ria at the advance screening of The Expendables at SM Block

at 70's Bistro with Peter and friends

Through the years, we have learned to simply let go of expectations (most of the self-help books and psychology books I've read in my lifetime always talked about "expectations" being the major culprit of relationships going awry) and to just go with the flow of our relationship's rhythm. A contributing factor to our current homebody lifestyle may also be the fact that we're now in our 30's and all we want to do when we can is to rest and sleep given the fact that we work triply hard from Monday to Saturday. Plus, since that day when we had a heart-to-heart talk about our relationship, all we want to do when we're together is to really communicate, cuddle and appreciate each other and find blessings in the smallest and simplest of things.

So last weekend, we spent a lot of hours sleeping together, eating and watching movies. We caught Step Up 3D at Festival Mall and did a marathon of Harry Potter 1-6. We bought tons of other movie DVDs which we plan to watch hopefully the next few days when we have the time. Marriage or any real relationship for that matter, is not about grand gestures and surprises. It's about doing the little stuff that matters and making simple things feel grand in your heart.

Cheers to our eleven years of love, passion, playing house, going to gimiks and travel, and here's to hoping for more!

Here's a photo album I compiled of our first few years of travels together:
Around the Philippines with My Baboo Part I
Around the Philippines with my Baboo Part II