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"Becki is 32; Kevin is 37. They&amp;#039;ve been together for nine years, married for almost seven. Tell me a little bit about how you met. Kevin: Well, the first time I saw her, I snuck a bunch of kids out of a church camp and drove to a show to see some friends play, and I didn&amp;#039;t know she was playing with this group of guys but she walked out on the stage and I was just like, Holy shit, this girl is hot. I think I even audibly said, &amp;quot;I want to marry her,&amp;quot; like as a joke. But then a year and a half later we actually met and then I was really like, &amp;quot;Holy shit, that is the girl I&amp;#039;m gonna marry!&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t speak to her for like six months because I was really scared. Becki: I thought he thought I was annoying and loud. Whenever I feel like someone is not responding to me, I take it up a notch. [Laughs.] Like, This guy is going to enjoy me and find me amusing and speak to me! Eventually he did. We ended up going to a Ben Folds concert with a group of friends together. You had kind of built her up, Kevin, in your head, right? How did it compare meeting her and getting to actually know her? Kevin: This is gonna sound corny, but I still hold her up like, she&amp;#039;s still \u2026 she&amp;#039;s \u2026 she&amp;#039;s incredible. I still look at her like \u2026 Holy crap, that&amp;#039;s my wife! I married her. I somehow snagged this beauty. That idea of her being on this pedestal is still there. Becki: But he&amp;#039;s seen all the flaws. Kevin: I have seen all the flaws. Becki: But he keeps comin&amp;#039; back. Tell me about the proposal. Becki: We got engaged after a year and I botched the first proposal. We were in New York. Kevin: I was trying to coerce her into going to Central Park. Becki: Mind you this is the last day of our trip and we&amp;#039;re hours from having to go to the airport so I&amp;#039;m like, ugh \u2026 Kevin: I was just like, &amp;quot;Cabbie take me to the Central Park,&amp;quot; and he just dropped us off.  Did you have a ring? Kevin: I did; it was in my pocket. Oh, and our friend group was gonna be waiting for us at the airport to have this big celebratory &amp;quot;Hoorah!&amp;quot; but with Becki feeling like we gotta go, we gotta go to the airport, you&amp;#039;ve seen the park, we gotta go \u2026 I had to send a text out like, &amp;quot;ABORT MISSION!&amp;quot; Family knew, all our friends knew. So I basically carried the ring with me for two months wherever we went so that if the time was right and it felt good, I&amp;#039;d pop the ring out and propose. But it truly worked out perfect because for our anniversary we went to this place that was the exact spot where we told each other we loved each other. We were being a little sentimental about the past year and she said something about worrying that I won&amp;#039;t be there. Becki: We&amp;#039;d gotten in the biggest fight in our relationship at that point the night before. Kevin: So she said something to the effect of, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m afraid I&amp;#039;m gonna lose you,&amp;quot; and I was like, &amp;quot;Ding, ding! No, you&amp;#039;re not, and I have the ring to prove it!&amp;quot; So that&amp;#039;s when I got on my knee. Becki: It was real cute. Anyone not on board with you getting married? Kevin: I had a weird, long relationship prior to Becki but that was like eight years from age 15 to 23. My family were all like, &amp;quot;Yeah, you guys are gonna get married,&amp;quot; and it didn&amp;#039;t happen. I met Becki when I was 28, so for that five-year stint, any girl I went out with my mom automatically hated, but not Becki. As soon as she met Becki she said, &amp;quot;Kevin, I have a feeling about her. I really, really like her.&amp;quot; So that was kind of a huge thing for me. I&amp;#039;m guessing you are from a fairly religious family if they were fine with you marrying someone you met when you were 15. Is that right? Kevin: [Laughs.] Yesss. Yeahhhh, small town. I was homeschooled. Yeah.  How do you meet somebody when you&amp;#039;re homeschooled? Becki: At church. Kevin: They paraded us around like, &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re not dating, they&amp;#039;re courting and this is how you do it, youth group!&amp;quot; It put a lot of pressure on us like, &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t want to be together, but they&amp;#039;re making us be together.&amp;quot; It was such a weird thing. I&amp;#039;m sure your fam was itching for you to get married eventually, right? Kevin: Yeah. I was 30 when I got married, and before I met Becki I was like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gonna die alone.&amp;quot; Becki: [Laughs.] Kevin: I&amp;#039;m not kidding! When I was 27, I went through a mild depression and I thought I&amp;#039;m probably gonna die alone, no job, still living with my parents. Becki: It&amp;#039;s a much different expectation age-wise, I think, in the South. Maybe even just small towns versus big cities where everyone is doing their thing like their career and their friends so you&amp;#039;re not so concerned about it. Twenty-seven sounds so young now too. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Oh my gosh, what were we worried about!?&amp;quot; Have there been any big surprises? Anything you didn&amp;#039;t see coming? Kevin: The arguments. I had a weird primrose view of marriage growing up because my parents, they&amp;#039;ve been married 43 years, and even to this day I&amp;#039;ve never seen them get into an argument. Ever. Period. I&amp;#039;ve never seen them argue, never seen them fight, raise their voice at each other. So the first time we got into a little argument, Becki raised her voice. It wasn&amp;#039;t anything big, but she just raised her voice and I was like, &amp;quot;What? What is this? What are you doing!?&amp;quot; Becki: &amp;quot;Not what I signed up for!&amp;quot; [Laughs.] And I was like, &amp;quot;THIS IS NORMAL!&amp;quot; Kevin: I told her she was crazy for a bit but then we went to therapy for, like, four months and I was like, &amp;quot;Oh. It&amp;#039;s me.&amp;quot; Since we&amp;#039;re on the topic of fighting, what&amp;#039;s been your biggest fight? Becki: Well, let me give you a piece of advice, Jane, that we did not follow but we actually do now: We are not allowed to argue when we have been drinking or after midnight. The one big, huge fight we had, we&amp;#039;d gone out in separate cars, and you got really drunk, and we had to figure out how to get the cars home, and blah, blah, blah. I started trying to have a rational argument about why I was upset. As I set it up, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem like that should be the biggest fight we got in, but it was really bad. Our dog was [hiding] in her kennel. [Laughs.] I used to think you needed to resolve everything before you go to bed, and I still have that desire. Well, yeah, people say don&amp;#039;t go to bed mad. Kevin: The Bible says, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t let the sun go down on your wrath.&amp;quot; False! Let it go down! Let it come back up and you know what? That big thing is gonna be the tiniest thing in the morning and you can discuss it over coffee and eggs and be done with it. Becki: I&amp;#039;m also a verbal processor, and I&amp;#039;m, like, cycling through trying to figure out what it is. I want to understand! I&amp;#039;ve never heard that phrase before \u2014 &amp;quot;verbal processor&amp;quot; \u2014 but I think I&amp;#039;m the same. Someone will say, &amp;quot;Well, now we&amp;#039;re just getting into semantics and you&amp;#039;re picking apart my words,&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;OUR WORDS ARE ALL WE HAAAAVE!&amp;quot; Becki: Sometimes I won&amp;#039;t realize what I&amp;#039;m feeling until I&amp;#039;ve tried to say it eight times. I&amp;#039;ve gotta cycle around and finally this one perfect sentence comes out and he gets it.  How has your sex life changed since you got married? Kevin: Gotten better for sure. Becki: I had never had sex before. So there&amp;#039;s that &amp;quot;learning each other&amp;#039;s bodies&amp;quot; in the beginning, but we&amp;#039;re actually in a really exciting place right now. Kevin: Yeah. [Smile at each other.] Oh yeah? Kevin: I would say we&amp;#039;ve hit a stride. Becki: [Laughs.] Yeah! It&amp;#039;s an exciting place of discovery lately. Kevin: Yeah! Becki: Which feels fun to talk about with someone else. Meaning what?  Becki: We&amp;#039;ve tried some new things that&amp;#039;ve been more exciting than ever before. Are you saying you&amp;#039;re in an open relationship or what&amp;#039;s going on!? Kevin: No! Becki: No, no, no, we&amp;#039;re just experimenting with each other more and being more adventurous. We were just talking last night about how much fun it&amp;#039;s been. Kevin: And this has just taken place over the last month, I&amp;#039;d say? Becki: Yeah. Well this new thing, yes. Okayyyy, how did you broach the topic of this mystery thing? How do you bring it up after seven years together that you want to try a &amp;quot;new thing&amp;quot;? Becki: I think he just started trying it and I just started letting him. So how often are you having sex? Kevin: Every couple of days? Becki: Four-plus days a week. That&amp;#039;s a lot. Congratulations. Becki: I wouldn&amp;#039;t say we&amp;#039;ve had it that often the whole time, but definitely more recently because we&amp;#039;ve been more excited to do it. What&amp;#039;s your favorite thing to do together? Kevin: Right now it&amp;#039;s sex. [Laughs.] Kevin: We play music together. Becki: We are in a band together, so that&amp;#039;s fun. Most of our interests are the same. There&amp;#039;s not much he likes to do that I don&amp;#039;t like to do.  What are you most looking forward to in your marriage? Becki: I look forward to and get excited just thinking about having a future family; what it will have been like looking back on having had a couple of kids and a couple of dogs and the jobs we enjoyed and albums that we&amp;#039;ve made. [Turns to Kevin.] Your answer can be completely different! Kevin: No! I mean, I just, I almost feel guilty, a good guilt, that I ended up with Becki, so I&amp;#039;m just excited that ... I just feel like I won. I can just say I won and I&amp;#039;m finished. Do you and your spouse want to tell your story? Or do you know a great couple who should tell theirs? Email secretlifeofmarrieds@gmail.com to submit for this column. 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 for a new interview. Previously: When a Disastrous Date Turns Into a Great Marriage. Jane Marie is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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