Thirteen years

Today Michael and I have been married thirteen years.

I don’t have any words of wisdom about marriage or long term relationships in general. Maybe what works for us would not work for you but for us the key has been friendship. Even in the moments when things were not OK we remained friends.

I don’t ascribe to the, your partner should not be your best friend, line of thought. Michael is my best friend. There is no one I would rather spend time with than him. Yes I have friends and obviously family that I love, but my person is Michael.

The other thing is laughter. Today we were talking about our life together. Reminiscing about the day we got married and then some of our previous anniversaries. We ended up laughing, mostly it is me laughing but that then sets him off. He loves to make someone laugh. I don’t think we have had a single day go by without laughter being in it somewhere. Some days more than others but again, even on those shit days there was always a glimmer of a moment where someone ended up chuckling.

Those two things together, friendship and laughter have turned out to be the two most important things. No matter what else has happened they have remained solid and given our relationship and our love the space to endure and grow and evolve and bring us to this day, thirteen years and will continue to do so on into the future.

“There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love.” – Oscar Wilde

I took this picture this morning. There was, or course, laughing involved because he can’t help being silly but the images I eventually got capture the soft intimacy of waking up with someone you love. When I saw the above quote it felt like it was written with an image like this in mind.