About Us, the Porsche Owner Couple

We’ve been married for 10 years this year.

I know this might seem like a “Who cares?” kind of story out of the blue… lol

We got married in 2012. Naturally, when we were newlyweds, there was no Porsche in our home, and I wasn’t interested in cars at all.

So, I never imagined that 10 years later, we’d be running a Porsche blog together as a couple.

Now, we run a blog as a couple and every Saturday we host something like a radio broadcast on Twitter Spaces, so maybe that’s why people often say,

“You two have a shared hobby and seem like a really close couple.”

But honestly, we don’t really think of ourselves as “close” — just a pretty ordinary married couple…

That said, looking back on the changes over these 10 years, I do think, “If we weren’t getting along, it wouldn’t have turned out like this.” So I wanted to reflect on us as a couple.

In conclusion, I feel that what’s worked well is that we’ve “thought about a relationship style that fits us, rather than following societal norms.”

Now, let me dive into what we’ve valued over these 10 years and how we’ve shaped our own way of being a couple.

Prioritizing “Feeling Comfortable with Myself”

We both share a value—whether good or bad—that “I am the most important person to myself.”

The key is “valuing our own will and being in a comfortable state.” Because when we’re happy ourselves, we can make the other happy too.

When we think about “our comfort,” often doing things together isn’t the best option, so we usually spend time separately.

We almost always spend long holidays apart, and we rarely go grocery shopping together on our days off.

Also, when it comes to plans to go somewhere on a day off, we clearly say “YES or NO” to each other.

For example, if my husband asks, “Want to go to ◯◯ together today?” and I’m not interested or don’t feel like going, I just say, “No, I won’t go” and decline straightforwardly.

Sometimes I suggest something and he says no, and other times we both want to go and do it together.

Rather than “I should say yes so I don’t hurt their feelings,” we clearly communicate “I like this, I don’t like that,” and I think this honest approach helps us understand each other’s preferences and spend time comfortably together.

Respecting Each Other’s Worlds and Keeping a Healthy Distance

We haven’t explicitly talked about this, but I feel there’s an unspoken rule of “not stepping too deeply into each other’s worlds.”

Recently, a fellow Porsche owner who knows us both asked me,

“Mina-san, as the wife of a company president, do you ever visit your husband’s company or give opinions on how it’s run?”

When asked that, I thought, “Oh… come to think of it, I’ve never done that at all.” I don’t even know how many employees my husband’s company has now or the current situation.

Also, when I mentioned that “it took me 10 years to fully repay the loan for the company I started in my 20s,” someone asked,

“That must have been tough. But since your husband drives so many Porsches and earns well, couldn’t he have helped pay it off?”

I replied, “Well, it’s my company, so that’s between me and my business, and I have to repay it myself…” but I realized I’d never thought about it that way before.

Looking at it this way, we have a kind of clear-cut stance of “he’s he, and I’m I.”

We haven’t formally agreed on this, but even as a married couple, we’re still individuals… and I think this healthy distance helps us maintain a good relationship.

Not Being Obsessed with Anniversaries

We don’t really care much about anniversaries… or rather, we both often forget them lol.

We’ve forgotten our wedding anniversary a few times, and even when we remember, we just say, “Shall we go out for sushi that’s not the 100-yen conveyor belt kind?” and have a casual family dinner—no special celebrations.

I admire couples who cherish anniversaries and celebrate properly, and I’m sure some would say, “Forgetting your anniversary is unthinkable!” but honestly, it’s beyond our control (we don’t even put it on the calendar lol).

But for us, I think the feeling is more like “valuing the ordinary 364 days over the one special anniversary day.”

So while we give each other freedom day to day, we also respect “boundaries we don’t cross” and try to keep in mind to care for and be considerate of each other as much as possible (though we don’t always succeed lol).

Valuing Our Conversations as a Couple

Nowadays, we talk every day, but after our second daughter was born, there was a period when we hardly spoke at all.

At that time, my husband often came home late, and I was exhausted from childcare and would fall asleep with the kids, so we had no time to talk and didn’t even try to make time.

Our relationship then felt a bit tense.

Then, by chance, we started this Porsche blog, and our conversations increased dramatically.

Most of our talks were about the blog’s daily traffic, article content, and car mechanics, but having more conversations naturally led us to talk about the future and what we were thinking at the time.

Through these talks, I learned that although my husband doesn’t show it often, he’s protecting our family in his own way and carrying big responsibilities, including at his company.

I started thinking, “If that’s the case, then it’s fine for him to go on solo tours or buy the cars he loves.”

Maybe the reason people say we’re “close” even though we’re not always together is because our conversations have built mutual trust.

We want to keep valuing our conversations as a couple going forward.

Continuing to Find Our Best Way as a Couple

We’re only 10 years into marriage, so we’re not in a position to preach, but I think what we have now is the result of “searching for what’s best for us, not what society says is normal for couples.”

This isn’t necessarily the right way for everyone, just what works for us, and there are as many ways to be a couple as there are couples in the world.

Our relationship will likely continue to evolve as our children grow and circumstances change, but we want to keep growing as a couple who “cherish what’s important to us.”