This year is filled with fours for me—four decades of life, four years of doctoral pursuit, four years of building my business, and, in love, four years of marriage as my husband and I celebrate our anniversary today. While I’ve never claimed to be a numerologist, I have always been drawn to patterns, particularly those related to numbers. So, as this anniversary settles, I’ve been reflecting on what “four” symbolizes.
Four Has Weight
The Universe holds a quiet wisdom, and the value of four carries its own weight.
Across nature, navigation, mathematics—even the sturdy legs of a table—four signifies balance and structure. Four is also a power number: 2². Its synergy multiplied—allowing two married people to {exponentially} expand their growth, strength, and wealth. Sure, some burdens can multiply over time, conflicts become more layered, responsibilities increase; but so do the blessings when you truly see each other.
Mama Earth moves from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and then back around again. Likewise, by the fourth year of marriage, you’ve likely witnessed your partner weather their own seasons too: some bloom of growth or success, the warmth of intimate moments, the chill of a setback, and the cold of some pain or loss. Each one teaches something new for you to learn more about how to love and support one another.
It seems like the Creator is giving creation a message: the number four represents stable foundations.
I think marriage follows this pattern in its own way too.
Four years of any partnership brings a call to reassure, refine, and/or renew the strength of connection. Of course, with each year added, you build upon a foundation for it to be strong enough to support whatever life throws.
So, we saw this year as a time to solidify our home base—especially our emotional and spiritual centers—so that it remains steady for decades ahead.
Four Invites Evaluation
Southern old wives tales and other unconventional wisdom refer to a five- or seven-year itch; but year four {through year seven} is often deemed a critical time, according to pop culture and psychology.
Couples decide if they’re in it for the long haul, with fuller understanding and commitment, and others learn that they are not. When you think about it, the timing makes sense: you’ve collected enough shared history to know each other’s greatness, ugliness, and quirks, and you’ve also settled into daily routines that can pose threats to romance and intimacy if you aren’t mindful.
The honeymoon glow begins to fade, and life be lifin’—careers, finances, personal goals, perhaps children or other caregiving. It causes a checkpoint to evaluate what you’ve built—what you are building—and notice if you are {still} building it together.
Year four becomes that gentle knock, prompting you to check your foundation. A moment where we chose to ask: Are we {still} seeing each other?
Four Perfects Your Marital Dance
Through my work with couples, I have observed a quiet force within the strongest relationships—a dance of seeking and studying. It is not a formula but an instinct, an unspoken rhythm both partners intuitively embrace: the man seeks his wife, and the woman studies her husband. Yet, for this dance to flow, both partners must feel seen by the other. This choreography sustains love, keeping intimacy abundant over time. By the fourth year, their cadence may grow more synchronized, steady in its familiarity yet rich with discovery.
This rhythm is not just something I’ve observed in others—I understand it in my own marriage too. Year four has shown me the power of being authentically seen—and how truly reassuring and renewing that is.
Four Refines Your Marital Love
When you sincerely matter to a man, he prioritizes and protects you, stays emotionally engaged, and finds joy in tending to you.
He notices you.
Not just in passing or when it is convenient, but in a way that turns mattering into noticing, noticing into monitoring, monitoring into seeking.
He searches for you—not just on the surface but rolling into the deep. Adele might not have been singing about feeling seen in marriage, but she captured some truth to it.
This kind of intimacy bears many rewards, but the highest form for me this year is how it has refined me. It has shaped me in the way only love that seeks you can.
There is an anticipation of needs, the right questions being asked, an unwavering presence that holds us steady—keeps us from slipping through the cracks, from going unnoticed.
There is accountability, the kind that makes us grow, that roots us deeper into our own selves and each other, into wisdom.
And it is a particular wisdom, a sacred knowing that marriage alone can grant when a man wholeheartedly seeks his wife and a woman deeply studies her husband—not solely out of duty, but from a wellspring of desire.
What I’ve come to realize is a husband seeking a spiritually astute wife is akin to him seeking wisdom herself. And somehow, in the mystery of it all, such wisdom leads to him seeking God too—as if he’s reaping double portions from a single pursuit.
Four Blesses Your Marriage
This year, my husband shared with me one of the reasons he chose me. I won’t quote him—for that tenderness only belongs to us—but he shared that my sense of spirituality was highly attractive to him. In that moment, something signaled inside, confirming what I already knew to be true: his seeking of me, from the very beginning but especially in these four years of marriage, has drawn him closer to the Most High. I’d love to take credit for that, and perhaps a piece of it does belong to me, but there are moments in life when a quiet intuition whispers: This is God. This was one of them.
Being seen, sought or studied, creates a witness—and in marriage, I have discovered one of its greatest gifts: having a personal witness to my life. And, on some level, the Creator may be even more aware of my existence because I play a role in how my husband seeks Him. At times, I wonder how I could be so worthy. But then, I remind myself of my own affirmation: I am worthy because I exist. And in that existence, my spiritual life adds value beyond me.
There is something fundamentally human about needing to be seen—to have our existence affirmed by another, to have our life and love narrated by someone who has truly paid attention.
This year alone, nevermind throughout our marriage, I have lost count of the times I’ve entered a room and heard, “He speaks so highly of you,” or been greeted with, “Your husband told me so much about you.” In these moments, I know he’s not just bragging; he’s seizing a chance to share what he knows, who he knows—me.
And while there’s a touch of flattery, it’s more than just praise. It’s evidence. Some proof that I matter. That I am noticed. That I am so intimately seen, he easily shares some part of my story or genius or aspirations, the things he’s excited about or proud to say. It is a way of declaring, She exists. She is brilliant. She is mine.
And what a beautiful thing it is—to be seen, to be cherished, to be known.
We grow as we go,
