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" Stephanie is 31, Tyson is 33. They&amp;#039;ve been together nine years, and married, well \u2026 You got married what year? Tyson: Uhhh \u2026 two thousand \u2026 uh \u2026 nine. Stephanie: We got secret-married in 2009; real-married in 2010. Tyson: Yeah, we had the family wedding in 2010, but nobody knows we went to the courthouse in 2009. [Laughs.] How did that come about? Tyson: I proposed in May and the wedding was set for \u2026 Stephanie: Well, after he proposed we knew we didn&amp;#039;t want to do it that summer, but we knew we wanted a summer wedding and for it to be on the beach and have all our family come out, so it had to be a year and a half later. So halfway through the planning process, we were like, &amp;quot;This is so stupid. We&amp;#039;re spending so much time planning this one day, let&amp;#039;s just go do it and then it won&amp;#039;t be as stressful.&amp;quot; Tyson: &amp;#039;Cause we agreed that the wedding was like ... Stephanie: ... for everyone else! Tyson: Yeah, everyone else gets to enjoy all the money we spent. What do we get to enjoy out of it? Where&amp;#039;s our secret moment? So in November we called my brother and her sister, and we said, &amp;quot;This weekend we have an appointment,&amp;quot; and they came and were kinda surprised. Did you tell your families? Stephanie: No. No one knows except our siblings. It&amp;#039;s been long enough now; no one would care. Do you remember the first time you talked about wanting to get married? Stephanie: It was like the first week that we started dating! Tyson: I remember that conversation in the car, driving past ABC Warehouse. I remember us talking about how into it we were, and I was like, &amp;quot;I could get married right now,&amp;quot; and you were like, &amp;quot;Me too!&amp;quot; Did you have any fears about getting married? [Tyson darts his eyes toward Stephanie.] Stephanie: He looks at me because my mom has been divorced three times. Did you always know you wanted to get married to someone at some point? Stephanie: I only wanted to be married if it was going to be right. I never wanted it to be something that I had to work at. If it was gonna be hard, then I didn&amp;#039;t want to do it. OK, I&amp;#039;m throwing this question in the middle because there&amp;#039;s no good place for it: Has your sex life changed since you got married? Stephanie: Not since getting married; since having kids, yeah. Tyson: We got a good three years of just fun! They say there&amp;#039;s a feeling of being &amp;quot;touched out&amp;quot; with a baby because the baby is always on you. And you&amp;#039;re kissing the baby and holding the baby, and when you finally put the baby to sleep you don&amp;#039;t want anyone on you. Tyson: Yeah, and you just want to enjoy the moment of just being able to spread out. I can remember the stages: When we first started dating, and it was years \u2014 years \u2014 where we&amp;#039;d sleep in a spooning position to the point where I&amp;#039;d wake up in the middle of the night and my chest would be sweating against her back. I&amp;#039;d be on fire because I&amp;#039;m a no-blanket person and she&amp;#039;s a blanket person. So I&amp;#039;m all spooning and sweating, but dealing with it because we were that close. Then years into the future we&amp;#039;d sleep close to each other, and we&amp;#039;d always say good night, kiss, and then hold hands. And we&amp;#039;d sleep all night holding hands for another few years. And then the last couple of years it&amp;#039;s gotten to the point where we&amp;#039;ve got this king-size bed and it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Good night!&amp;quot; [Mimes rolling over.] Oh, really?! Tyson: Yeah, but then sometimes in the middle of the night I&amp;#039;ll roll over and find her. So it&amp;#039;s not like we&amp;#039;ve grown apart; we&amp;#039;re just getting more comfortable with the idea of that space, of spreading out. How does your marriage differ from your friends&amp;#039; or families&amp;#039;?  Stephanie: I feel like we&amp;#039;re better friends than most people. Tyson: Like we share interests, but we generally have this same logic, we come to the same conclusions in most situations. We think the same. What&amp;#039;s been your biggest fight since getting married? Stephanie: We don&amp;#039;t fight; we&amp;#039;re not fighters. We bicker about driving \u2014 he hates my driving, I hate his driving. Tyson: Or food options? But that&amp;#039;s about as serious as is gets. Huh. So, what are you most looking forward to in your marriage? Tyson: Retirement. Grown kids. We don&amp;#039;t even have the second one here yet and I&amp;#039;m already looking at 18. Stephanie: We wanna travel. Tyson: Yeah, we&amp;#039;re gonna sell the house, whichever house that is, and move into an old folks&amp;#039; home at 50. Shut up. Tyson: Yeah! I wanna move into an old folks&amp;#039; home as soon as we can. Are you serious?! Tyson: Yeah, &amp;#039;cause then you don&amp;#039;t have anything holding you down. Stephanie: [Laughs.] They have reduced rent. Tyson: And the kids don&amp;#039;t live at home! Yeah, just sell the house and travel. Fuck it. I don&amp;#039;t care where I live, do you? Stephanie: Nope. Tyson: I also look forward to, now that we do have a family, just hanging in the backyard. Sunny day type things. Going down to the beach. Things we can do every weekend if we want. What&amp;#039;s been the main difference between being married and dating? Stephanie: A lot changed with marriage; we bought a house ... Tyson: ... the level of grown-upness, there&amp;#039;s a real thing to that. We used to get really impressed with ourselves for cooking dinner at home and setting the table, rather than having pizza and beer. And it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Yeah, fucking great, you set the table.&amp;quot; So we had fun playing grown-up, but then when you get married, it&amp;#039;s on. It feels good. Any advice for people who are thinking about getting married? Stephanie: Don&amp;#039;t do it if it&amp;#039;s gonna be a lot of work. I feel like where we live, you get married a lot later in life. A lot of my friends from home were married at 23, and a lot of those people are divorced now with kids and are single-momming it. Are you speaking from the experience of having friends talk about how difficult their relationships are and then being like, &amp;quot;And ... we&amp;#039;re getting marriiied!&amp;quot; and you&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;Why would you do that?!&amp;quot; Stephanie: YES! Yeah. That&amp;#039;s a really funny piece of advice. It&amp;#039;s the opposite of what everyone says: &amp;quot;Marriage is a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of work.&amp;quot; Stephanie: And I don&amp;#039;t think it should! Tyson: Yeah, I don&amp;#039;t think it should. Stephanie: You work enough in life: working toward buying a home, working for retirement, working to please your boss. You work 40 hours a week; everything is work. The one thing that shouldn&amp;#039;t be work is being who you are with the person you love. The Secret Life of Marrieds is a weekly series of interviews with married couples about the things no one tells you about marriage. Check back every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST for a new interview. Read the entire Secret Life of Marrieds column here. Jane Marie is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter. Photo credit: Courtesy of Stephanie and Tyson "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a6692/married-secrets-stephanie-tyson/?src=rss>