A few years ago, a friend of mine told me that when she laid in bed at night, beside her husband, she could almost feel electricity between them. ”Energy,” she said, “without trying to sound New Age-y. But it’s like energy. That’s how meant-to-be we are.”
I liked the sound of that.
And it’s true: in the days before I married Simon (and the days after, mind you), I finally knew what it was to know. My mama always said I would. I remember writing to him – as we did then, when I was in North Carolina, planning our wedding, and he was in England preparing a home for us – and saying, “I know, that I know, that I know, that I know, that you are the man I am supposed to spend my life loving.”
It felt good then, to know. It still feels good. But two and half years into this thing, and sometimes what I love most about marriage has very little to do with sparks and electricity. At this point, what I really love is the security that comes with waking up every morning beside a man who has seen me at my very worst. He has watched me throw temper tantrums to rival the worst-behaved three-year-old you know; heard me gasping and heaving, sick with the flu; seen me with zits so gargantuan they seem to be pulsing with my heartbeat; watched me crumble to the ground with fear and anxiety, out of breath, out of faith. And still, he chooses, every day, to love me.
Whatever I thought I knew before, pales in comparison to what I know now.
