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A geeky way
Finally after three articles where I dance around the subject, I’m going to explain my version of romance and how it functions in my marriage. I dithered on expounding for a while because I wasn’t sure how to articulate it, which given my usual propensity for words is telling.
I’m not even sure when my view on romance began to shift. When I first started dating Jonathan, I had what would be considered a more traditional view on how to approach love. As I matured it changed, influenced I’m sure in no small part by my husband’s personality. He’s the most laid back person I know, and yet he’s also the sweetest. He’s not given to grand cinematic gestures, but he commits small sweet acts on a regular basis.
He cooks and cleans when I don’t want to, sometimes both in the same day, carries my dishes to the sink if I look comfortable where I am, takes the trash to the dump if I ask him to, looks after the cats when I’m ill, takes the dog out when it’s cold or raining. I do these and other sorts of things for him as much as he does them for me.
Grand gestures are nice. They’re a good way of letting someone you know that you care about them, particularly if it’s for the first time. But once you’re married (or even once you begin a serious relationship), you’re looking at a lifetime together. If you go into your marriage with the goal of trying to surprise one another with gifts every time they’re exchanged, to constantly floor the other one with elaborate declarations of feeling, you’ll get burned out very fast. And the times in between these great moments might not be able to measure up.
That’s not to argue against trying to take all of the excitement out of a relationship. We still try to do big things for one another, still try to surprise the other, on occasion, with birthday presents. But we don’t expect the other to do it, and we instead place greater significance on all the small sweet things we do for one another on a far more regular basis.
What’s really romantic for me is how well we still get along. Yes, we’ve only been married for three years but we’ve been together for eight. We were 18 and 19, respectively, when we first started dating, and now we’re 26 and 27. People go through immense change in their twenties, the decade when true adulthood begins. Some people head into their twenties and change away from their partners. I didn’t. I grew closer.
My husband and I can be giant lazy dorks together and it’s perfect because we’re both happy that way. An entire weekend spent watching movies, reading, and playing video games, sometimes together, sometimes apart, is the ideal. I realize that soon we’ll have children and that will have to change, but we’ll face that utmost of life changes together.
What matters is that we both know what the other one wants, and that’s what we seek to fulfill. We communicate any changes in our feelings. Perhaps that’s boring, but then we’re both boring people so it’s good that we’ve found each other. We look after one another and make sure to show each other how we feel through realistic, daily gestures. For me, the life I’m living now is the perfect romance.
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