On Friday, June 20, Two Thousand and Eight I came to a startling conclusion as soon as the ceremony closed: I have a wife. It is without a doubt the most amazing realization of my life thus far, more profound even than the first moment I realized the concept of mortality. We've spent the last three days breaking in the terms "husband" and "wife", as if the act of merely repeating them was in some way an echo of the original act of marrying, and in some ways I'm not so sure it isn't just that.
I told my wife when we first realized that we were in love that I firmly believed in the sincere, constant recitation of the phrase "I love you", not because of any need for validation or any uncertainty in the truth of those words, but because that truth deserves exultation. I know couples who simply stopped saying it altogether at some point, and I know people who say it almost dismissively...a reflexive sort of utterance that comes from obligation rather than passion. I know people who keep it completely private and only say it to one another when no one else is around. My wife and I treat those words as though we just discovered them, and are still fascinated.
It makes a difference; after years of living together, having the normal variety of disagreements, arguments, and frustrations that are included in any couple's relationship, people who didn't know better still mistook us for a 'new' couple pretty much the whole time, and were positively sickened when we told them how long we'd been together and they realized that this stage of looking deep into one another's eyes, holding hands at the table, and smiling like fools randomly throughout the day wasn't ever going to end for us.
So right now I'm still rolling that new phrase around. That, and sometimes we look at each other and chant sextasyllabically "ho-ly shit, man and wife" over and over again in unison like we're in the stands at a sporting event. =)
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