Relationship Appreciation Post

My wife and I started dating in January of 1991. It was our Junior year of high school. I wasn’t much of a teenage lothario. Things got off to a great start when I started middle school and had two girlfriends within two months of entering Warsaw Middle School. Nothing to write home about. The first girl and I never even went out on a date, just long conversations on the phone. And those conversations really weren’t all that intimate since we had one phone in the house and it hung on the wall in the kitchen. Nothing like having steamy conversations while your mom is 4 feet away doing the dishes listening while pretending not to listen.

I went to the movies with the second girl, a double date with her best friend and mine. We went to see Stand By Me, but the lady in the ticket booth did her job and wouldn’t let a bunch of 12 and 13-year olds into an R-Rated movie. So instead of the hottest movie in the country we ended up seeing Tough Guys with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. So not cool.

By December I was single. I’d broken up with both girls out of basic fear of no idea what to do in a relationship. Christ, I was 12. I’d only boxed up my Star Wars and GI Joe toys a mere four months prior. Besides, when I showed my mom the wallet-size school photo the second girlfriend had given me her response was “She looks fast. Be careful with that one.” I was like “What?”

So after that two months of dating bliss I was once again a single dork that was too introverted to stand out. I stuck with my handful of friends and my obsessions with music and playing guitar, as well as horror movies. From the second part of my 7th grade year to the second part of my 11th grade year I was flying solo. But then a mutual friend of my wife and I had said she thought we’d be a cute couple. Now this mutual friend, I never knew when to trust her. She was big, boisterous, and one of those people who was the main planet while all her friends rotated in her orbit. And she was hard to say no to, as she sort of scared me and I was always waiting for her to punch me in the arm or pinch me really hard. She equally doled out love, friendship, and pain.

I decided what the heck, if this girl was willing to go out with me then why not? She was a redhead that had been in my 8th grade science class. We never spoke, but I thought she was cute. She ended up picking me up on a Saturday night and we saw Mermaids at the Lake Theater(you know, the Cher movie with Winona Ryder, Bob Hoskins, and a little Christina Ricci.) The movie was, well, I can’t remember if the movie was good or not. I was just excited to be on a date. After the movie she asked if I wanted to go get some food. I had a $20 bill that my mom gave me burning a hole in my pocket so I said sure. We ended up going to Noble Romans and split an order of breadsticks with one of each sauce and two cherry Cokes(this would become a regular meal for us for years.)

Our second date was the following weekend and we ended up going to Fort Wayne with my friend Rick and his girlfriend. We went to the Glennbrook Mall and I bought her the sheet music for Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”, with money I either got from my mom or saved lunch money(I guess both scenarios would be money from my mom.) I also bought The Police’s Outlandos d’Amour on cassette.

After our third date my wife broke up with me.

We’d gone out with two of her friends(the one that set us up, as well as a friend of my wife’s she was in band with.) We went to see L.A. Story with Steve Martin. Not sure how we landed on that one, but all three of them were laughing rather obnoxiously loud during the movie. I just sat there wondering if it was some inside joke. Needless to say they dropped me off at home and by Monday I was told that she’d rather just be friends. I was like, “Umm, okay.” I was resigned to the idea for a couple days, but then I thought “What did I do?” I wrote her a note, and about a week later she wrote me back saying she thought I wasn’t interested or something to that effect. I told her I was definitely interested. That following Sunday she picked me up and we saw the movie Awakenings and that was it. We were a couple again.

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34 years on from Mermaids and that shared basket of delicious breadsticks we’ve stayed together. We’ve had an amazing life up to now. It hasn’t all been great. If it had been this all would be fantasy fiction, not reality. We’ve had plenty of learning curves; tripping over our words and saying things out of hurt and anger, dropping the ball here and there(and there and here), and sometimes losing sight of those kids that started dating their Junior year of high school. It was easy to do in the haze of being parents and working opposite shifts in order for our kids to always have one of us around.

There’s plenty of things I wish I could go back and do differently, react differently to, or just had shut my big mouth and listened before offering my opinions. But these are learned behaviors, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot in 34 years. I’ve learned even more in the last 15. I come from a family of reactors, not patient listeners. Seeing that behavior I’ve made a real effort to change that behavior in me, and I think I am better. Thoughtful introspection goes a lot further than flying off the handle or saying the first thing that pops into my head, like Tourette’s.

I feel like the last 10-15 years my wife and I have found our groove as life partners, as parents, and as equal investors in this thing we call our life. It’s amazing how much your love can grow and how badly you need someone to complete you when you’re on the same page. We don’t have to agree about everything, but we do agree about most things. I don’t just appreciate my wife; I rely on her for guidance, strength, her level-headedness, and her practicality when it comes to the daily functions of a family unit. She can definitely overcomplicate things, so that’s where I come in to help her see the forest for the trees. We’re truly 50/50 partners in this life, and I’m so thankful we found our way to here.

We nurture our loves, likes, hobbies, and even the smallest of whims. All of those things go to make us who we are, so we never say “Really? Come on.” We say “Hmm…okay. Let’s do it.” We have a living room full weird art I’ve made over the last two or three years because of the whim I had that I wanted to make art. I have shelves full of records and CDs that are like food for my soul. I don’t get any guff from all the metric tons of round plastic. I get encouragement and excitement from my wife. And we usually have a new plant show up in the house every couple weeks or so and I’ve come to absolutely love having plants in nearly every room. What I may have thought of as clutter back in the day has become a joy. These living organisms growing and thriving, much like this relationship we’ve grown for 34 years.

I’ve made a life with a blind date, and it’s the single best decision of my life to have gone to see some cheesy movie on a cold Saturday night in January. We will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary on June 15th, so next hear will be 30 years married, 35 together. Maybe we’ll have another 30 years, or maybe I’ll die next week. I’m planning on that not happening, but if I did I’d die knowing that the last 34 years have been the best I could imagine. Why? Because I found my life partner. She’s been across the table eating breadsticks with me all along. My co-parent, my co-pilot, my cohort, and my co-conspirator.