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When you get married, you combine your lives into one, unified system. You merge eating habits, sleeping habits, TV-watching preferences and personal hobbies. Your own individual likes are put upon the other in the hopes that they will share your interests.

In a relationship, there are a lot of things that you will have in common, and a lot of hobbies that you can pass on to one another. For example, I hadn't spent much time camping in my life, but I was happy to take on a new hobby since Marshal loved it so much. And he wasn't as into art appreciation as much as I was, but he has since learned to love it the way I do.

But there are always a few things that aren’t so easy to adopt. One was Marshal's desire for me to learn how to snowboard. He loves snowboarding. The man would live in an igloo and snowboard every day for the rest of his life if he could. So naturally, since it's something that he loves so much, he wanted me to be able to do it with him.

Doing things together is the whole point of being in a relationship. You want to be together and to spend time together. And sometimes that means having to put up with things you're not entirely psyched about. So that's exactly what I did. I adorned myself from head to toe in brand new snowboarding gear, compliments of my eager and excited husband.

Skiing, however, is much more sane. Your legs are on separate skis, therefore allowing them to move independently from each another, which is the way God intended. Snowboarding, on the other hand, seems like an uncivilized form of torture, binding your legs to one board and expecting you to figure out how to make it work. I swear God invented snowboarding to get a good, hearty chuckle. Thankfully, I had a helmet, and I began to attempt this death-trap sport on the bunny slopes, which have about a two-degree incline. I was still terrified.

After a couple of hours of attempting to get the hang of it, I was wiped. Marsh was so patient, trying to explain why snowboarding makes complete sense – despite challenging the laws of physics – and kept hoping that at least a tiny part of me would like this activity that he loves so dearly.

At one point, I got insanely frustrated and told him to go away so I could teach myself. Not my finest moment. But while he sailed down the mountain a few times without me, I swore to myself that I would get this, that I would at least learn the basics of what he had been trying to explain to me. And I did.

I was motivated by the fact that he loved me enough to buy me all new gear, take the time to teach me, and be prepared for my meltdowns and tantrums while I tried to learn this unnatural sport. Even though I didn't want to do it, I knew that he was only trying to include me in on one of his favorite things. I couldn't be mad at that, as much as I wanted to kick my boot off at the 4-year-olds who were whizzing by me on their tiny boards. So I took the first step in Snowboarding 101 and can now at least stand on my own. And I’ll keep trying until we can add this to our list of hobbies that we both enjoy.

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