One anniversary or two?

Today is my anniversary with my fiance Paul. We are celebrating six glorious years of dating bliss, I know it doesn't sound as good as wedded bliss, but that will change soon. In 7 months and 17 days to be exact.

As I thought about my anniversary today, I began to wonder what happens to dating anniversaries once you are married? I know you get to replace it with a wedding anniversary, but I feel like that means I'm forgetting about all the efforts we put into this relationship before we became man and wife.

The first year was the hard decision of moving from friends to lovers, followed by the heartache of carrying on a long distance relationship. And that led to deciding whether to "live in sin" or not.

A few years later my boyfriend had to ponder what was more important to him, eventually having a wife and family, or keeping one of the coolest careers ever - being on a pit crew team for an Indy race team. Although I never asked him to make this decision, he felt in the long run he couldn't have both and chose love.

These are just the significant milestones for us. What about the little things? Like when I came home one day, beat from all my responsibilities and feeling sorry for myself because I was in an empty house. I entered our kitchen and there he was with a dozen roses and just 8 hours to spend with me before he had to take his three-hour drive back to work. Or like whenever he'd leave for a race, he would leave me a T-shirt covered in his sent to hold me over for a few weeks.

Now, when we have particularly busy weeks he leaves me notes in the morning counting down to when we'll have more than five minutes together. And almost every morning, he puts the toothpaste on my toothbrush for me before he leaves.

Relationships are some of the best things in life, but in addition to love, they take a lot of work and compromise. We've earned our relationship and I just don't think I can imagine ignoring the anniversary that got us here.