My husband and I recently celebrated our seven years of marriage. Seven may not be much for people who have already celebrated their silver or golden anniversaries. But I just want to share with you what has been working for us, so far. So, I’ve listed down 7 things that have kept us going in our relationship.

We find common ground with enough room to grow.

Just like many couples, my husband and I have many similarities and differences. We generally both love music, movies, traveling, food, reading, writing, and many other things in life. And it’s because of our common interests that we initially clicked. But there are some things that we don’t exactly agree on. I love citrus fruits and juices, but he doesn’t. He digs heavy metal, which can be tolerable for me as long as the volume is kept very low.

All those similarities and differences, I believe, keep us connected and, at the same time, let us keep our individualities.

We weed out the problems while early.

I guess no one has a relationship without any trouble or obstacle. Whether caused by me, by him, or by anyone else, we do our best to talk things over. We agree that while it is important to listen to each other, we also speak our minds when necessary. We think that one tragic thing that could happen in a relationship is to be in deep trouble and reason out with “Oh, I thought you wanted…” And it’s only because no one told one another how he or she really felt.

We sprinkle our lives with some spontaneity.

I’m talking about big and small spontaneous gestures of love. I’m happy to say that I’m fortunate to have someone who surprises me with small tokens. He’d suddenly come home with a bunch of flowers for me. Or he’d bring me juice, fruit or some healthy stuff, just because he noticed me tired or lacking sleep before he left for work.

On my part, I’d cook a really special dinner even if there isn’t any occasion.

We’d sometimes decide to pack our bags and leave the following morning for a day or overnight trip out of town. Even with the baby now, we still do this sort of adventure travel – only with a little more caution, though.

And we get doses of laughter, too.

I can’t live without humor in my life – and the same with him. So far, we’ve always shared a good laughter, whether it’s the movies, a YouTube video, or something our little girl has done. There were even times when we’ve seen the humor in some of the problems that we’ve gone through.

We go out to get some sun.

Especially when things get stressful at work or in our personal life, we encourage each other to sit back and appreciate the basic things in life. It’s something that we usually forget when things get rough. And we’re glad we have each other to help ourselves with that.

We prune excess growths of fairness.

What I mean by this is that in everything we do, we don’t always think about what’s fair or not. We don’t count how many things I’ve done for him up against the list of the things he’s done for me. I just do things for him, because I think he’ll be happy with it. And the same thing goes for him.

We feed our life together with faith and prayer.

When I was still single, I’ve always thought that if I’d get married I’d want a  man who shares my faith and my basic convictions in life. And I’m blessed to have him now. We’ve already shared a lot of prayers that helped see us through the tough times. And everyday we give thanks for whatever we have in life.

As I’ve implied in my intro, 7 years don’t make me and my husband experts in marriage and relationships. My husband and I still have a long way to go. But I just thought that these things are worth sharing with you. Maybe someone out there might come across this and would be inspired by a thing or two.

Any secret ingredient in your relationship that you want to share?