I feel like I’ve known and loved Jay forever, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been 10 years. More like I just met him last week and we hit it off fabulously. Jay and I are partners in everything. Work, play, live, love and now we’re parents! How did we survive 10 years of hardly ever being apart?

Jay and I eloped and did the quickie Nevada wedding. There was no time to think about it much. One moment I was an international student planning to move back to the Philippines after my student visa expired, the next moment we were married.

At first we fell into the “marriage trap” thinking we had to be something we were not, modeled after what we observed of our parents’ marriages. We were miserable the first few months and feared that we had made a big mistake. Then we realized we could redefine what marriage meant to us and make it our own. There were no rules that said we were supposed to spurt 2 1/2 kids and work hard for a house with a picket fence. We eventually relaxed into what we were really about, doing wicked things, making mischief and having a great time.

We had fights too. Life wasn’t perfect. We lose our heads sometimes. We’re both volatile passionate people. The worst was when we got to the point of calmly (as opposed to a heat-of-the-moment) considering going our separate ways. But we reconsidered and we’re still together. I guess we’re both just too stubborn and too proud to go back on our promise of “till death do us part.”

I’d say the secret to our marriage is that nothing is taboo. If I find another man attractive, Jay invites him over for a tryst. Whatever kink Jay is curious about, I am up for it. The biggest challenge we have right now is to find the delicate balance of parenthood and still being our naughty sexy selves. The past two years, we’ve been focused so much on being parents, that our sex life is on the backburner. We haven’t had the time to just lay around enjoying each other all day. We’re always looking at the clock or trying not to wake the baby. I know this is just a stage, and that soon we’ll be able to let our kid go off to the grandparents for the weekend so Jay and I can have some wild uninterrupted times, but it sure feels like forever.