Dulywed: Dirty Dozen

Mottinson,

It took 12 years but at long last, we have settled into a fearless crazy disregard for what another human being thinks of us and this is what life looks like now. Typical.

Our days start with a thing you've dubbed the Three C's: coffee, chickens, and computers. I, being the lucky one, enjoy a fourth C in the morning: cleaning. While the coffee brews, I harvest dishes from your various drop off spots and try to keep people from knowing we're slobs. You sometimes flavor the day with such hits as Ra Ra RasPutin and Age of Aquarius played at an excruciating volume for someone who hasn't had coffee. Every now and then you'll come up with an inspired jingle, like that one day when I was having a surge of love for you and rather than return the affection you offered a chorus of "Surgin', surgin'... A Surgency!" At some point (hopefully before noon), we release the chickens into the yard, take a seat at the table you didn't know we needed, and sip coffee while scrolling our screens. Sometimes we go to work, sometimes we go for walks, sometimes we have a cocktail with lunch. In the evening, we eat dinner sent to us by Blue Apron because we've become both lazy and fancy. Then you strap yourself into a device that hangs you by your ankles in an attempt to fix your back while I burrito myself up in a blanket and watch Water Wives, a show the rest of the world knows as Below Deck. At about 11pm, we yell at the Xbox to put it on HLN so we can watch Forensic Files and fall asleep on the couch for an hour.

So, I ask you, how does retirement feel? Pleasantly boring or oppressively empty... I still can't tell.

In between all these typical moments, we've had some pretty extraordinary ones this year. We became international real estate moguls. Your parents moved in next door, which means we get Laila on demand. Bubba, Lee, and Mateo have been next door since they moved in too. Having that scrawny boy run into my arms yelling TITA! and saying Woooowwww when he saw the new bathroom floor tile and giving me a thumbs up for the Thanksgiving food I cooked have been some of the best compliments I've ever gotten. Speaking of Thanksgiving, you should come sometime. Work took you away from that and a bunch of other wonderful stuff this year and DIDN'T YOU GET THE MEMO ABOUT RETIREMENT? You started a private practice and then grew that practice, all while working another full time job. The bathroom was renovated and the floors were refinished. We road tripped through ghost towns and around alpine lakes and to wild hot springs. Then you sold the Miata. Then you sold the boat.

That boat, that sweet Kenutu. Letting go of that boat was heart wrenching. As much as she was a pain in the ass, I loved her more than I even realized. We had some of our worst moments and our best moments on her. She taught me that sometimes it's better to just shut up and do what you're told. She taught you to say you're sorry when you're nasty as a response to being worried. We endured fiberglass torture and neurotoxic fumes in a spirit of can-do that our relationship never knew before. She gave us gratitude for able bodies that can bend in strange ways. She gave us challenges that required us to work together to overcome. She was a gift to our character development and I think she is to be credited with testing our relationship in a really significant way. When Kenutu left our lives she took a piece of us with her, not just a piece of me or a piece of you, but a piece of us. She was something we did together and now what do we have left?

The Files.

I left a little mark on our girl before we let her go.

At this point in our story of togetherness and devotion, the space between us is quietly strained with something. Like white noise, something that's there all the time but you have to tune your ear into it to know it's there. Love persists, I know that, and I trust it will keep us coming back to the same bed every night. But there is also a tinge of disdain, a subtle longing for some greener grass, a curiosity about what we would be as people if we were not caught up in this union. I often feel like a servant and am accused of being dead weight or a slug. You often feel tied down or dismissed and see me as the person clipping your wings so you can't go anywhere.

The reality though, at least as I see it after all these years, is that while we are blaming each other for the absence of imaginary outcomes, we should be appreciating each other for being a constant that allowed us to flourish into the reality we live in now. We've got it good. So incredibly good. Twelfth anniversary silk and linen luxury items good. I want you to know, even though you'll never read this, that my love for you does not require your containment. If you need to do something that puts us on different paths, I will be sad but okay. I will be there when you return or meet you wherever you end up, and I will be happy for and supportive of you along the way. I will miss you, I will feel bewildered and lonely, but I will be okay. I love you, more completely than I've ever loved anyone, by choice. That choice is not always a product of my heart and head being in alignment, but it is the choice I make every time I ask myself if this marriage is worth it. The choice I make is the same one I made a dozen years ago: you.

I came across part of a TED Talk by Esther Perel about desire and monogamy a few years ago while listening to the radio and I instantly loved her perspective on long-term relationships. In the few years since then, I've kept up with some of her stuff, listening to her podcast and reading articles she's in, mostly because she takes these very conflicting and ambivalent feelings I have about "wifing" and simplifies them in the most amazing way. The last, best thing I read was in The New Yorker's "Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm":

Do you have a working definition of love? 

It’s a verb. That’s the first thing. It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings—positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones. But it’s a very active verb. And it’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm...

I think that definition today of love—“you are my everything”—where you really see it, this complete exaltation, is in wedding vows. Have you ever noticed? I mean, it’s, “I will wipe every tear that streams down your face before you even notice it’s going down.” I think a realistic vow is “I will fuck up on a regular basis, and, on occasion, I’ll admit it.”

So Mack, I will fuck up on a regular basis, as I have done for the past 12 years. And, on occasion, I'll admit it. You try the same. We keep doing that, and someday, we may just get to happily ever after.