I have spent approximately one third of my life, in a relationship with my now husband, Kyle. 10 years ago, on September 23rd 2016, we had our first date. Our relationship started out in the blur of my Senior year of college. The tiny town of Gunnison, Colorado is where we lived when we first fell in love. We would spend our time skiing, mountain biking, sharing music with one another, and partying or camping on the weekends. I tried to break up with Kyle once, when we had been seeing each other for about a month. I didn’t think he was that into me, and I didn’t want to feel tied down my senior year. But the day after I did, he texted me telling me how bummed he was, because he really liked me. I’ll always remember him saying “I truly thought that we could’ve had a badass relationship.” I’m not sure how he knew so early on, but I’m forever grateful that he did. So of course we got back together, and we haven’t separated since.
Spring of 2017 I graduated from Western Colorado University with a math degree and no idea how to use it. Kyle quit his job as the parts manager at a GM dealership, and we moved out of Gunnison to bike from Vancouver, BC, down the pacific coast, to San Francisco. Technically – we set off to bike from Canada to Mexico, but we only made it to San Francisco. Our time on bikes together was quite hilarious, looking back. We had only been dating around a year, and we were about to move into a tent together for 3 months.
I don’t even know what stories from this trip to tell because there are too many. I remember the first couple of days in Vancouver we were staying at someone’s house who we had met on the app ‘warm showers’. This is where gracious people offer free places to stay for bike tourers, an app we ended up using often. The couple we were staying with gave us beers and fed us while they told us stories from their tandem bike ride from Alaska to Argentina, a journey that took them 2 years. Leaving their house, we were nervous but excited to start biking and creating our own memories to share.
We had decided to pack ultra-light, and only brought a jet boil to cook with. This inevitably lead to us going out to eat more, although we still found time to make creative meals in the jetboil. Someone told us to try mixing instant mashed potatoes, and ramen, which turned out better than expected. Our days mostly consisted of waking up in our tent, deciding where to ride, then procrastinating the ride so that we would usually arrive at our destination in the evening. Once we got there we would go out to dinner, drink beers, and then find somewhere to pitch the tent. Often times we would meet someone at the bar who recommended where we could set the tent up, or who offered up their own backyard.
A month or so in were spending more money than we had planned and saved for, so we took a pit stop in the middle of Oregon, where our friend had found us a job trimming weed. For a couple of weeks we were at trim camp, working so we could keep biking. We lived in this huge house with some friends and some strangers, listening to podcasts and music all day while we trimmed. It was serious work, I even had to bring my own scissors.
I can see now, one of the reasons we were so compatible was our hunger for adventure, and a strong distaste at the idea of a boring life. One of the goals of the bike trip was deciding where we wanted to move once it was all over. After meeting someone from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and from there learning about Sandpoint, Idaho, we made the decision to move to a town we had never even visited. Ending our bike trip we did research about possible jobs, and found a 6 month furnished rental.
By January of 2018 we were driving our two cars and all of our belongings up to North Idaho. I remember driving into town on Highway 200, the weather cloudy and dreary. We pulled up to our spot on Cedar St, met our landlord who showed us around the house, and then walked downtown to get a burger and a beer. Moving to a town where you don’t know anyone is interesting. I remember hanging out with the most random people at the start, mainly people Kyle worked with at the Sushi restaurant he was serving at. I only lasted a month at the Orthopedic surgeons office before quitting to work at a restaurant as well. I was waiting tables, usually breakfast, at the local diner, Connie’s cafe. We both ended up working at a couple of different restaurants in town, making friends with other servers, and finding ourselves at the bars after work most nights. We were young, and it was so fun to be making new friends, and creating our new life in Sandpoint.
Bartending/serving was only going to get us so far, so I decided to get my Real Estate license, and Kyle decided he was going to become a pilot. We both did what we set out to do, and before long Kyle was flying us around, and i was selling houses. Our relationship was becoming quite serious by this point. I don’t remember if there was a conversation about if we were going to get married, or if we both just knew it was going to happen one day.
In November of 2021, we went on a road trip down to Colorado for Thanksgiving. We stopped in Moab on the way down there with some friends to go mountain biking, and Kyle proposed to me on The Whole Enchilada bike trail. He hung back until it was just me and him, got off his bike and pulled out my grandma’s old ring. I was told my response was “shut up are you serious?!”.
2 years later we were standing on a beach in rural Mexico, with 40 of our closest friends and family, and we got married. We had been together for 7 years. Our relationship had come quite a ways, we travelled together as much as we could, and we now had a close group of friends in Sandpoint. Just after our wedding Kyle decided he didn’t want to be a career pilot and we made the decision to go all-in running our real estate business together. Learning how to run a business with your partner is a challenge, but one we were not taking lightly. We fought about who should do what, and how to do it best. We spent hours dreaming about what our business would be called, what we wanted it to look like in 5 years, and how we wanted to spend our goal of early retirement. We joke that we choose to do our relationship on ‘hard mode’ when we decided we were going to work together (from home) on a business with no other employees. 3 years later (present day) we have made it through the struggles of being a new business. Now we get to enjoy the hard work that we put in while continuing the daily to-dos.
They tell you marriage takes work, but no one bothers to tells you what the work actually is. We had to figure it out together, because we weren’t willing to settle for a mediocre relationship. 10 years later the arguing is much less volatile than it was years ago, less yelling and more listening. We’re both willing to take accountability, and admit when we are wrong. Even harder than admitting when you are wrong, is listening with empathy, even when you don’t agree. Of course, this is all a work in progress, but knowing you and your partner are on the same page, with the same goal of being in a healthy happy marriage, is fulfilling and encouraging all the same.
Lots of change and growth happens from the age of 26 to the age of 36 (hopefully). I have had the pleasure of watching Kyle change and grow from a wild, young man into a more mature version of that same wild and young man. Not everyone gets lucky like we did. Sometimes when you grow up, you grow apart. But after 10 years I feel thrilled to still love the version of the person I am married to. The amount I have learned about myself, through the lense of my partner is unquantifiable. We have pushed each other to be better, and supported each other through times of suffering. Never once have I doubted his commitment to me, and to our life together.
Not everyone gets to experience the joy of a long term partnership, and the depth and complexity that comes after so much time. It’s not something I take for granted. Today I find myself thinking back to our very first date, where we biked around grabbing drinks, and talking late into the night about music and life. I can’t help but think despite all the changes, we still end up out on bikes together, and find ourselves talking late into the night about our dreams. Having a loving, kind, and deep partnership is something that makes me feel emotional and weepy. I think about where we will be in 20 years, in 30 years and hopefully in 50 years. I know he will still be talking shit, and slapping my ass well into our 80s, and if we’re lucky even beyond that.
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