I love valentine’s day. While a date night and candy or a teddy bear is fun, I mostly love it because it’s a reminder to reflect on the early days of my relationship. Ryan & I had been casual friends for a couple of years before we became really close. We got really close the summer of my 16th birthday.

I was drawn to his friendship at first because he was a great listener. I had normal teenage growing pains combined with some serious family stress and struggles. My adult family members were really struggling with what was happening, which was tough to watch as a teenager and I was feeling the stress too but unable to help in any way. He would do a lot of just listening but he also was great at getting me to consider other people’s perspectives. I developed an interest in psychology at a young age because I really want to understand as many people as possible. I try to be caring and loving and I know that understanding the perspective and choices of others can help me be kinder and more understanding with them even if I wouldn’t have chosen their same actions in their situation. So I loved that his mind worked similarly in trying to understand the other people all the time. I felt like our moral compasses, our view of people and life in general lined up pretty similarly and I loved that. He was also really funny, and seemed to have very little “filter”. He wouldn’t hesitate at all to bust out movie or tv show references if I said words that reminded him of certain scenes. He would just say and do silly things at the drop of a hat. I have always been pretty reserved and I tend to over think everything I say. It was refreshing that he was confident enough around me to say or do whatever came to mind without worrying that I might judge him.

Randomly one night in early fall I knew he was heading into the town I was living in, so I suggested that he stop by my house. We walked around town just talking for hours. It quickly became a weekly tradition for him to come to my place and just walk around talking. I looked forward to his visit all week. One night on our weekly walk, I realized I had gotten off on a tangent about a painful childhood experience that I had only talked about with a couple of my best friends. When I had shared it with my friends, I had to work myself up to be able to share it. I was shocked that the story had just naturally spilled out of me without thinking twice. Still, I didn’t regret sharing because he listened so well and was so understanding. That’s when I really realized that there was something really special about my connection with him because I was able to be more open with him than I had ever been with anyone else. Over time I saw myself lowering my “walls” with him in other ways. I would join in on his silly singing, movie or TV show line referencing and just overall silly antics. I felt the ability to really be myself fully without having to second think everything I said or did and I had never felt that way with anyone else before, ever. The ability to be myself completely unrestricted left me feeling so very close to him and it wasn’t scary because I trusted him so much. I knew I had fallen for him but I was worried that he might think we were just friends. So I was relieved when he asked about my feelings and if I wanted to date. Of course I did!

Of course, the rest is history and here we are 8 years later. I still am amazed at my ability to be myself around him and how deeply I can trust him and how well we communicate. This will be our 9th Valentine’s day together and I’m excited that a cute love movie is coming out just in time for Valentine’s day.

The new Nicholas Sparks movie, The Choice will hit theaters February 5th and the trailer looks so sweet. It’s about making difficult choices of the heart to find your destiny and perfect match. I love dogs so it’s so cute that the main characters are first brought together due to an encounter between their dogs and their dogs play an important role in the story. Catch the The Choice trailer to learn more and grab some tickets for your Valentine’s day date!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Emily

Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.

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