A Love Letter to My Relationship

I am not a sentimental person, but buckle up folks, we’re about to get sappy.

In a few days, Ben and I will celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary, marking the day when, in our late twenties, we stood in a paint-splattered artist’s studio in Los Angeles, California, in front of our family and friends and pledged our commitment to one another.

There was nothing religious or traditional about that day, other than, I suppose, the fact that we called it a wedding and exchanged rings and vows, certainly none of the “be submissive to your husband” kind of vows. We opened the bar before the ceremony, and we didn’t have a cake. I wore flip-flops. There was no mention of God, nor was there any semblance of a receiving line. Instead, we had an old-school iPod Shuffle operated by a friend who managed the playlist that Ben had painstakingly curated over months for every part of the event.

Another good friend officiated the ceremony, and we walked down the aisle after the “I Dos” to Tupac and Snoop Dogg’s “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.” Everyone enjoyed candied bacon and Southern-style barbecue. (Well, except for me. Our guests ate all the bacon before I could even get a piece; the worst part of the whole day.) My cousin got high in the bathroom with Ben’s pseudo-aunt. One of our friends cried because she was convinced she would “never have a love like we had.” We drank, we danced, we laughed, and later that night we ordered way-too-expensive late-night pizza to our hotel room. Like any good couple who hadn’t waited to have sex, we consummated the marriage the following morning.

It was an incredible day, and it was only the beginning.

Movies and television position the wedding ceremony as the culmination of the story (sometimes even the engagement), the dénouement. We never saw our wedding day as the finish line. It was a party celebrating our beginning.

Praise for Effort?

A couple of weeks ago, during an interview about intimacy and long-term relationships, the interviewer said to me, “Wow, fifteen years! Congratulations.”

I made a face and, awkwardly, with hesitation, replied, “Thank you.”

I shrank back from her congratulatory remark; it didn’t feel justified.

Congratulations for what? For loving someone? For building a life together?

No. That wasn’t it.

For sticking it out? For enduring someone for fifteen years? For what is assumed to be fifteen years of hard work?

That’s it. That’s what the congratulations were for.

This wasn’t praise for fifteen years of love. It was praise for fifteen years of effort, toil, strife, and the ability to weather hardship without giving up. It was like being congratulated for surviving cancer. (As a cancer survivor, I reserve the right to use that analogy.) You survived a grueling battle, now go ring the chemo bell.

I don’t think that was her intent, at least not consciously, but I think it’s what underlies so many of the congratulations we offer people in long-term relationships.

And so, when she said it to me, I winced. I don’t want that kind of congratulations. I don’t deserve it. I haven’t suffered or endured.

My Relationship. My Favorite Thing.

My relationship is my favorite thing about my life. Hard stop.

Some people might not appreciate that sentiment, given that I have three children, whom I love zealously. The way I see it, I don’t have those children without Ben, without these fifteen years. I don’t have this life, its joys and pleasures, without our relationship.

I see my relationship as the root of so many of the gifts in my life, of so much of the awareness and growth I’ve experienced. My relationship gives me the stability, security, and joy from which I thrive. I’m not giving my power or agency to Ben; they’re still very much mine, but I am celebrating our relationship, the foundation from which I’m enjoying the fullness of my life.

There’s a well-worn trope about long-term relationships: they’re hard work and sacrifice. And it’s precisely the hardness of the work that makes it worth doing.

I understand these sentiments, but I think people use them to justify or rationalize the challenges they experience. It’s a bit like saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” These explanations reassure us that our circumstances are normal, expected, or even necessary.

Without sounding like a complete shit cunt, I don’t subscribe to the “marriage is hard work” ethos. (*I live in Australia now and have delighted in adopting the playful and versatile use of the word cunt.)

I am madly, stupidly in love with my husband. I tell him regularly. I am enamored by him, drawn to him, and intoxicated by him, still, more than fifteen years later.

I’m not just in love with him; I’m in love with the life we’ve built together, our three incredible children, the adventures we’ve shared, and the future we have yet to create. (For readers and listeners of Dan Savage, you might hear his voice now. He would often talk on his show about his partner, Terry, and how happy they were together. Then he’d joke that he was probably going to go home that evening only to hear Terry say he wanted to leave him. It’s like saying “no-hitter” during a baseball game. Nobody does it. But here I am, shouting “No-hitter!” at fifteen years. I’ll take my chances, roll the dice, and hope that after this article is published, Ben doesn’t come to me with the dreaded four words: “We need to talk.”)

Our love is free and easy and smooth; ever-present and ever-evolving.

He winks at me, I touch his thigh, he kisses me, I hold on for an extra few seconds and pull his face back toward mine. We have sex regularly, we walk and talk, we listen to music, we go out, we root for each other, and we give one another honest feedback.

We love big and deep and wide and true. We love within the constraints of our reality and across the expansiveness of our dreams.

Unconditional Love?

It’s only been within the last three months that I truly understood his love for me as not just any love, but as unconditional love.

He’s loved me unconditionally throughout our entire relationship, but I didn’t know it. Not fully, anyway. I blame childhood stuff for this late-in-life, late-in-relationship realization. (Sorry to be a cliché with daddy issues, but I am who I am.)

This realization stemmed from an article Ben read. It was about intimate relationships, written by one of his favorite researchers. He shared it with me, as he often does when he reads something he thinks I’ll enjoy. I read every article he sends, not always right away, but I always read them. This one I read a day or two later while I was at work.

I cried. But I didn’t know why. I went back to work. I read it again. I cried again.

I sat at my desk staring at my computer, crying.

You know how you can hear something a thousand different ways, but on the thousand-and-first time, it finally gets through? It penetrates the blood-brain barrier and your emotional center absorbs it. It moves beyond intellectual understanding and becomes something you know in your body.

That’s what happened to me reading this article.

Standing in our kitchen that evening, cleaning up after dinner while the kids were reading, I looked at Ben and told him the article had made me cry at work and that, standing there in the kitchen, it was making me cry all over again. I’d spent the afternoon trying to understand why an article discussing intimacy, something I’d read and thought about a thousand different ways over decades, had broken me wide open.

I began to cry. Ugly, heaving sobs.

I looked at him and said, “I think you love me. Like...you really love me. Unconditionally.”

He looked at me with such sweetness. There was a flicker of surprise, but then a smirk of knowing, of recognition. He looked at me like a man who understood my emotions better than I understood them myself.

He smiled softly. “Of course I do.”

He walked over, wrapped his arms around me, and held me while I sobbed.

In that moment, I realized that Ben had loved me unconditionally our entire relationship and that I had never truly understood unconditional love before. (See aforementioned daddy issues.)

Something in me shifted, cellularly.

I know unconditional love for my children. But to experience unconditional love from someone who chooses it, someone who isn’t bound to you by blood, obligation, or duty, shook me. I had discovered a state of being I didn’t know I had; I didn’t know I had missed. I was overcome by the simultaneous grief for what I’d never had and profound gratitude for everything I did.

Our kids noticed my tears and started asking if I was okay. I love our kids, they are so sweet.

I told them I was okay.

I was, in fact, the most okay I had ever been.

It was probably a little confusing for the seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old brains in the room to understand why Mama was suddenly sobbing in the kitchen, but I assured them I was okay. Ben laughed and said, “Yes, Mama is okay. She loves me, and I love her. She’s just fine.”

Me. Ben. Us

I don’t just love him, and he doesn’t just love me. I love our relationship.

There is Ben. There is me. And then there is the entity we have created together: our relationship. It isn’t simply a mash-up of the two of us or a partnership where we hold hands and walk in lockstep. It is its own ecosystem, a living organism that thrives with care and, in turn, nourishes the joy, growth, and wonder of our lives.

I do live in the real world. Every day isn’t butterflies and rainbows. I have kids’ camps to schedule, laundry to fold, dog hair to sweep up, and a fucking mammogram to book. Life is, in fact, challenging. But that’s not because my relationship is hard work. My relationship makes my life easier. It creates space for abundance.

So, as we celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary, an “I love you” simply won’t suffice. Not even an, “I’d marry you again today if I could.”

I love Ben with my whole being. I would marry him again, but even that doesn’t fully capture it. I love him, and I love the relationship we’ve created. I love this unique entity from which everything else in our lives has grown.

Within the architecture of our marriage, built from the blueprints we’ve drawn and the definition of success we’ve created together, we are thriving. Marriage isn’t the end of possibility or the finish line so many cultural narratives suggest. At its best, marriage is the beginning. It is the foundation from which an entire life can flourish. For fifteen years, that’s exactly what it’s been for me.

Love you, babe.

-C