Four and a half years ago, two distinct individuals, who had both long ago committed to lives of introspection, started falling in love with each other before they even had a conversation. As one of these two singular entities, I am extraordinarily grateful to the other person who shares my life with me and his life with me. Turns out, the middle of our Venn diagram is something so simple and ordinary that it is a thing of magic. After years of finding the expression trite, I have recently found it to be true and will state it here: I have found myself more in love with him than the day we met. He is continually the person in the room most interesting to me, most attractive to me and maybe to everyone else, too. Whereas I once admired the novelty of new love, somewhere along the way, this yielded to the prized possession of shared reference in the most intimate, quiet, secret-glance-across-the-room way.
Part of my sustained love for this person has come as a product of my quest for equal love. This is the kind of love where the housework is shared, the expenses are shared, the emotional effort it takes to find joy in the mundane, the repetitive, the quotidian is shared. Of course, it has taken unlearning the people pleasing tendencies modeled to me and other women and girls since the dawn of the agricultural era to get to this equal love. As such, I am still arriving. Three months ago, I suddenly could no longer be the only one who planned meals, made grocery lists and cooked dinner for two people every night. I imploded like a dying star, but was put back together after a simple ask for help, which was actually not simple at all. I am proud of myself for breaking the pattern and communicating my needs, eventually. It gave me confidence in myself and the life I am building. I am also proud of my partner for stepping up when I asked him to. This gave me confidence in him as the right person for me. He plans, shops for and cooks dinner as much as I do now and we split the dishes, too. Now I get to think about other things a few evenings a week—like writing, like reading, like making art, like watching TV, like playing an instrument, like exercising, like socializing, like catching up on work, like relaxing. All of these are the benefits people who don’t have to cook dinner get for free. They can accomplish so much more without the burden of sustaining their biological lives.
This marked a change in our relationship for me at about three and a half years in. And, thank the gods because we had a rough summer. Since then, the fall has been exciting, comfortable, steady, supportive, intentional, adventurous. Our relationship has become a level, fertile ground for the rest of my life and his to sprout from. We made new, meaningful friendships. We made a home in a rented house. I will get my master’s degree before the end of the year. He was accepted into grad school. We spent a holiday in our own home. We got in fights and recovered. We both cooked many dinners. We both thanked the other for cooking dinner, as we both now know it takes some time and effort. We turned the corner on four years since our first date, where we went to a yoga class together and after went for coffee and tea. I had two cups of green tea, not knowing then that green tea was (and still is) Anthony’s personal religion. We started talking about how maybe one day we will get married. But, at this point, it doesn’t matter to me if we ever do. Life isn’t about having a wedding. It’s not about the completion of a degree. It’s not about owning your home. Of course, it’s about the very little things. Thankfully, I have never found it hard to find joy, intrigue and a sense of divine ritual in the very little things.