Why Did I Get Married?

Julie and Jim say the reason they got married almost 12 years ago is pretty simple...Julie was pregnant with their first child.

"We found out I was pregnant right out of college. We decided that we were in love, and that we were going to get married and do what we thought was right," Julie says. "It just happened a little sooner than we had planned."

The couple says the first few years of their marriage were more stressful than they imagined. "I didn't really know what to expect," Jim says. "At 23 we were in love, but we were doing what we were supposed to because we had a child on the way."

Before the wedding, Julie says she thought marriage would be easy and that the romance would never fade...she was wrong. "The marriage, it was very, very difficult," she says. "I had this dream of beauty, and [I thought] it was going to be wonderful. But in the real world, it doesn't happen like that."

With kids, work and household chores pulling them in different directions, Jim and Julie say they've come up with a creative way to keep the spark alive—hotel sex. "Twelve years and three kids later, sometimes it's important for us to get away," Julie says. "We're somewhere else, and it's just about Jim and I concentrating on what makes us happy."