My awesome wife slipped out of the house, Em in tow, before Bug and I awoke Saturday morning.

When she returned, she arrived bearing gifts.

Gorgeous flowers and my favorite grande drink from Starbucks. Does she do Sweetest Day right, or what? (Her horrible wife had completely forgot. Thankfully, she was genuinely and whole-heartedly forgiven.)

This seems like a good time to answer another question posed by one of my Facebook peeps.

How about some stuff about how you and the wifey maintain your relationship. It’s hard to stay close as a couple when you have small children, jobs and a social life. I think we could all learn a thing or two from you guys!

Ash and I do have a great relationship. Granted we have our issues, challenges and difficulties (mostly individual issues that affect our us, as oppose to relationship issues) but we have learned to deal with them and grow together.

I think our biggest us thing is our night out, sans kids. Sometimes we do a nice dinner, meet up with friends at the bar, take in a comedy or theatrical show or whatever else we feel like doing. Hell, one night we grabbed some sandwiches and ice cream and went home to clean!

We joke that one night we will just drop her off and head home to bed. To sleep! Seriously!

Regardless of what we do, it is our time. And it is monumentally important to us.

We fight.

That may not sound like a relationship builder, but trust me, it beats allowing things to fester or wallowing in resentment. We typically fight clean and simply argue, but we have had some.necessary blow-outs.

She is a “let’s talk NOW” and I am a “give me some space and let me cool down.” Unfortunately, there is no easy compromise on that, so she gives in more than I do. She hates waiting, but I hate fighting mean and dirty even more.

However, we are always a team. We always have one another’s back. Whether the issue is parenting, our relationship, the household….we always work together.

We compromise. A lot.

We don’t keep score.

When we discuss something or argue, we try very hard to only discuss the topic at hand and leave past mistakes, situations and wrong-doings in the past. We fail, on occasion, but we get back on track.

We have awesome, amazing, stellar communication. We talk about anything and everything.

We laugh. A LOT. I mean a lot, a lot.

We used to do our highs, lows and loves every night. We shared our high and low from the day, as well as one thing that we love or appreciate about one another. We got out of the habit when Ash worked a swing shift that involved overnight shifts. This question was a good reminder to reinstate that tradition!

I think that’s a pretty good start. I will leave out the basic mutual attraction, really liking one another, having similar long and short term goals, etc. But all that helps too!

I’m not really sure what the secret to our success is, but I’m sure all of this helps a great deal!

What’s your secret to marital/relationship success?!