Starting Over Creating Traditions

By D' Forman for Take Flight Summit

Traditions in relationships, like always having a Halloween party or regularly taking portraits together, create lasting, easily-recalled memories. My husband and I had no children. Not that having no children means no memories, but we left memory-making to chance and I feel like I missed something important, especially now that I’m a widow. 

I’m in a new relationship – let’s call him Sweet P – and as we get more committed to each other I want to make sure I don’t make the mistake of leaving memory-making to chance again. We still a lot of time left!

Since Sweet P and I both have families that have their own traditions that we’ll be participating in – mostly around holidays –– I’ve put together a few ways I plan to use traditions to create memories just for us all year long. Some will make us feel like we’re teenagers again! Some are endearing. Some are to stop, reflect and say a thank you for being in my life.

• Sweet P and I belong to a couple of Meetup single groups and have become friends with so many new people. I want to appropriate one of the Millennial’s traditions – celebrate Friendsgiving the weekend before Thanksgiving with those of our friends who might be alone.

• The first kiss re-creation date! Sweet P and I, prior to a first date, met for breakfast on January 15th of this year. A stand-out memory of that morning is how he looked deeply into my eyes as we got to know each other. When he walked me to my car afterward, he asked if he could kiss me. Such a sweet gesture that made an immediate impact on me and of course I said yes! And his kiss was also a stand-out!

• We met on New Year's Eve which already has so many flashy, over-the-top traditions associated with it, I want to create one that has some meaning just for us and isn’t based on the excess of NYE. After we’d been dating for six months, I wrote Sweet P a letter that told him of all the things I would remember about him and our first months together. I’d like us both to do that each year and exchange it on New Year's Eve before we go out to the public celebrations. He writes me such beautiful texts that I know he’ll knock this one out of the park!

• I don’t know about you but life has sped up to a breakneck speed for me. Every month we look at each other and wonder where the whole month has gone. Once a month I’d like to share a simple chocolate-dipped ice cream cone toast at Dairy Queen. (We recently rediscovered how good they are and our mutual admiration of soft Dairy Queen ice cream)!

• One thing I’m doing especially for me and to preserve some of my own thoughts and memories is journaling. I don’t write every day, but when I have something to document or work through. That’s how I know exactly when our first kiss was or the day he first told me he loved me. And how I realized that I hadn’t done a very good job of creating and retaining memories in my marriage.

I choose to be more deliberate and thoughtful going into this new mature relationship where our traditions won’t revolve around kids and our shared family. Have you created traditions that celebrate just the two of you? 

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