Conversation with My Wife (38)
Tell me why / I love like I do / Tell me who / Can stop my heart as much as you
Standing at the bathroom mirror, doing the usual morning routine. Deb notices I’m staring at her face. I get a few side-eyes before she says:
DEB (resigned): What?
ME: Nothing. Just enjoying quiet companionship with my wonderful wife. And thinking about the emotional rides some of my “Medium peeps”* go through. I read these falling-in-love poems where the world is exciting and everything is new and the trivial becomes exotic because they’re in love. And I remember how wonderful that feeling was, and I feel a little envious. And then a few months or weeks or days later I’ll see a Life Totally Sucks Like You Would Not Believe poem that goes into the breakup and I think, okay, yup, always had those periods and they lasted longer and seemed more awful (in retrospect) than the good parts were good. So you’re just… wonderful, honey.
DEB: I know. Not the wonderful part, I mean the emotional rides. We’re, like [traces finger through the air in a straight line] with occasional [finger does quick trace up, back to baseline, quick trace up] and the rare [finger does quick trace down and back to baseline], so I think we’re pretty blessed. I don’t want to have to deal with the [finger wiggles up and down frantically] any more.
ME: Especially after what we’ve been through.** But even though we’re not crazy stupid in love any more, I’m still pretty addicted to you, Debster. Maybe it’s not Jumping Out Of A Plane exciting, but it’s not Oh Crap I Have No Parachute exciting, either.
*As Deb calls them. The folks who make up my (very nebulous and fluid) social group on Medium, with a wide variety of ages, cultures, and geographic locations. All speak English, or have managed to get Google Translate working better than I have. And they’re all people I’ve managed not to piss off (yet?) or have forgiven me when I’ve screwed up (thanks, gang!).***
**Both of our first marriages were to gay spouses. In my case, a bisexual who realized she was actually lesbian; in Deb’s case, a straight guy who realized he was actually gay. (Yes, we had interesting conversations in the “getting to know you” phase of our relationship.)
***Yes, I understand there may be some selection bias here. Nobody’s saying there’s anything random, here.
