The Best New Year's Eve Ever

John and I didn't really make "plans" for New Years.  Most of our friends were busy with other shindigs and being out of town and such, so we decided to lay low and have a pretty chill New Years Eve.  (Plus, I have determined that I am officially too old to do tequila shots, so it's probably for the best.)

But, we do have this New Years tradition we started a few years back that we needed to fulfill, so we decided to drop the baby over at Grandma and Grandpa's and head out for a nice dinner and ceremoniously toast the old year out and the new in while completing said tradition.  (Mind you, this is at 6:30pm.  Like I said....I'm old.)

Our tradition, which I have grown to love, is an idea we got from some book on relationships and adapted a little for ourselves.   Every New Years, we are each granted three wishes--they can be anything we want.  The intent behind these wishes is to focus ourselves on how we can better our relationship, and tell each other three things we wish would change or be improved upon.  Whichever of us is receiving the wish is not allowed to make any kind of judgments about those wishes.  We are required to remain as open-minded as possible toward each other, and commit to trying as hard as possible to fulfill that wish over the course of the next year.   Sometimes they are things that we wish the other person would improve upon, like "I wish you would be more open to watching movies with me".  But more often than not, they end up being things that we wish we could focus on together, like "I think we could both be better about making passive-aggressive requests to each other" or "I wish we would start being more conscientious about how wasteful we are".

So tonight we sat down at Prairie Fire restaurant in the West Loop, opened up our past New Years Wishes and reviewed how we did.  Then, while eating amazing food and the best dessert I've ever tasted in my life (Sticky Toffee Date Cake--holy sh*t I could die in that cake), we alternately gave our three wishes.  I don't know, maybe some couples would have conflict over something like this, but I can honestly say that tonight was one of the best nights of my life.  I felt more in love with John than at any other point in our marriage.  Being able to talk openly and honestly about what wasn't working quite right in our relationship and what we could do better, all with genuine smiles and laughter (and Sticky Toffee Date Cake) and not a hint of defensiveness, I mean that's AMAZING. 

After dinner, we came back home eager to...umm...consummate our wishes and officially ring in the new year.  If there is one thing I know about my life and what I'm doing right, it's this: my marriage rocks.