In addition to finding out when I got married that I wouldn't have to cook, I also quickly found out we didn't fight. Ever.

We dated for two and a half years before we got married, and there were plenty of arguments during that time. Some passive aggressive ones, some noisy ones, most in the middle. So I expected that to continue, maybe even get a bit worse as we tried to figure out how to live with a roommate you loved and didn't want to alienate.

But each day flowed nicely and easily into the next, seven days a week. Someone asked us a few months in how things were going. We laughed and said, “It's been great! We never fight. Of course, we rarely see each other.”

Indeed, it was the perfect roommate situation – John's hospitality job had hours almost exactly opposite those of my accounting job. I'd get up and go to work while John slept in, then he'd leave for work before I got home, returning after I'd gone to bed. Even his days off were the opposite of mine.

It was great for creating conditions for living together without conflict.

It was terrible for people who actually wanted to spend time with the person they loved.

We continued this pattern for about seven years before we finally found a way to spend more quality time together – change careers!

When we moved to Phoenix from Michigan – where all of our families were – we realized we had a wide-open opportunity to do anything we wanted. Our moms would never know what we didn't tell them. Freedom!

So John decided to follow his dream and go back to school and get an art degree, which eventually led to his animation certification. It was awesome! Even though he now worked crazy hours and went to school, too, we were so much happier. Then he graduated and got a job in graphic design. We worked the same days, same hours, and were home at the same time.

Then we had dozens of new things to argue about and the time to do it! After seven years, we had a real marriage! We were two cute little monsters in love.