Earlier this week my husband and I hit a big milestone in our marriage – our 7 year wedding anniversary. We celebrated by going out to lunch while the kids were at school, because we haven’t quite scoped out the babysitter scene since moving to Texas.

It was nice to spend some alone time together, something that with a two and four-year-old at home happens much less often than either of us would like to admit.

We talked about the dreaded 7 year itch in a marriage.

I don’t know if this is actually a thing. We agreed that this last year probably held our fair share of marital hardships between me leaving my job, the miscarriage, and the move, and decided to move on.

What surprised me most about our kids-free conversation was how often reflecting on our life together turned into work talk. And how, for us, the two topics seem to be so intertwined.

Yes, sometimes our marriage feels like work. But I mean work-work.

Being married in our early 20s meant going through a lot of job experimentation and self exploration while fulfilling the roles of husband and wife.

If you would have told me 7 years ago that today we’d be business owners living in Texas waiting on baby number 3, I would have rolled my eyes. And yet today, it seems somewhat obvious that we’ve been heading in this direction all along.

Let me take you back to 2009.

While many of our friends were still finishing up graduate school or searching for jobs following the economic crash the year prior, we were handing in our 2 weeks notice and preparing to move across the country to get married. We arrived back in my hometown of Kansas City just a month before our August nuptials completely jobless.

Over lunch we talked about what a turning point that was for us, as professionals {if either of us could have been labeled that fresh out of college} and as a couple {it was good practice for the 3 moves that would follow}.

Our families warned us not to do it. They said the move was irresponsible. They encouraged us to be appreciative of the jobs we had given the economy. Looking back we can appreciate where they were coming from.

But I think we’d make the same choice if we had to do it all over again.

That itch to walk away from stability to pursue what we wanted would become a habit for us in the seven years that followed.

During that time, my husband would be laid off, start his own business, return to a career in finance, leave once again to run Pit Stop Auto Detailing full-time, and most recently accept a corporate job where he can continue to pursue something he loves while still operating his own business from afar.

While my own business path may have fewer curves, it’s also had a lot less direction than my car-loving husband’s. Unlike him, I wouldn’t discover something I really cared about until my daughter was born.

Not only did I immediately become crazy about being a mom {something I always knew I wanted to be}, but I unearthed an unknown desire to be a working mom {something I’d never even considered for myself}.

Yet, it wasn’t until after the birth of my son two years later that I got my own itch to pursue a business of my own.

With all of the changes in our careers, one thing has kept us both {me} from totally losing our {my} minds.

We’ve always taken turns satisfying our itch.

There’s no way my husband could have started his own business in 2010 without my reliable paycheck {however measly} and health insurance.

There is no way I would have pursued going out on my own without the stability and success of his business.

Over the last seven years I think we can both agree we’ve gotten what we wanted out of our professional lives, just not all at the same time.

Just like the jobs we’ve held, our marriage is hardly perfect.

We don’t always see eye to eye on who should change our son’s diaper or pick up the cat puke on the floor {true story}. There is more yelling in our house than either of us are proud of, and with the busyness of kids and careers someone’s needs are often unmet.

But one thing we’ve consistently done throughout our marriage is support one other whenever we get a professional itch. We take on each other’s goals, even if it means taking turns.

And we’ve never gotten that marriage itch, which makes being his wife the best job I’ve ever had.