I was 20 years old when I met Cam. We were engaged after two and a half months and married one year later. This year we will have been married for 27 years.
I feel a mix of exhausted and exhilarated when I think about that. Having our relationship somewhat played out in the media as the “Golden Couple”, I expect people must think itʼs been all rainbows, love hearts and cupids singing us to sleep at night.
While there have been many moments of those experiences, itʼs also been, up to our waist in mud, sweating, back breaking, shovelling with blistered hands kind of work.
Weʼve come so incredibly close to splitting. I have hated, loved, hated Cam more times than I can count. Each time we nearly separated, we dug back into the “shit” and grew. We learned a little more about ourselves and each other and what love really looks and feels like. What commitment means.
There is a dance that we do. Sometimes we dance together, sometimes apart, and my least favourite, the dance where our toes have been smashed by the other and we lie bleeding on the dance floor. Those times can take a while to heal and usually need a bunch of kind-hearted women to carry you off the dance floor and bandage you up.
Iʼm a child of fairy tales and magic, I love “LOVE”. While that may be a beautiful thing, the fairy tale thing had me in a trap. I didnʼt realise how much I needed to smash that ideology into pieces.
Top Comments
In this day and age of the throw away society, where if your marriage is not working you either cheat, or leave, or both, it is lovely to see a couple who not only faced the problems head on, did it together and came out stronger because of it. All these celebrities who marry in the public eye (Kardashians) and divorce a mere millisecond later are what is wrong with our society today - if it is broken, you throw it out. Ali and Cameron Daddo are very much like my grandparents generation, where if it broke, you tried desperately to fix it, you worked hard at it, and hopefully you reaped the rewards at the end. There is not always a fairytale, there is hard work, but the rewards outweigh the struggles.
Excellent advice. My marriage is 50 years old but because we've never had much money we've never had the spray tans and the margaritas.