This weekend I am home alone with my two kids. My wife Chelsea, is spending the weekend at the lake with her mom and some of their friends. They try to do this a couple times a year, usually once in the spring and again in the summer. As I sit here thinking about her I’m reminded of the old saying “absence/distance makes the heart grow fonder”. That is one of the reasons that I’m never opposed to her “girls weekends”. But there’s more to it than that. It is my belief that married couples have to take time for themselves and to themselves. We all need time to decompress and get away for our routine every now and then. I also think it is important for individuals to maintain a relationship with who they are inside and who they were before life happened. See, I love my wife and I am in love with my wife and that feeling grows stronger as the years go by. I’m thankful for the life that we have built together and I am more excited every day about what our future holds. But there is one undeniable fact that I think some people overlook. No matter how much I love my wife now she is not the person that I fell in love with. I love Chelsea the wife and Chelsea the mother of two and Chelsea the new career woman but none of those people made me fall in love for the first time. You see, once upon a time there was an “18 year old college student Chelsea”. She spent many weekends hanging out with her friends and generally doing what 18 year old girls do and enjoying life to the fullest. She was young, energetic, carefree and probably a little reckless. That is the Chelsea that stopped my life in its tracks. That’s the Chelsea that made me feel something that I’ve never felt before. That’s the Chelsea that put me on the path towards this beautiful life that I now live. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t trade my wife now for the 18 year old version of herself that I fell in love with but sometimes I think we lose sight of that. We forget who we were when we fell in love and I think, on occasion, we need to be that person not just for our spouses but for ourselves. Something about you, many years ago, made your spouse stop and tell themselves that you were the one that they wanted to spend the rest of their life with. Do the both of you a favor and keep that person alive, inside of you, forever! I love you baby and I hope you girls or having a blast.