It is nearing the end of March. A few short days from the 18 month mark for Megan and I. A few short weeks from our new home together. And I am feeling so damn good about this girl and this relationship and this future we are building.
As we approach this new stage of our lives and of our life together, I’ve been thinking alot about the ways we build love and trust and closeness day by day. And I am so glad for the way things unfolded in this relationship, and continue to unfold. Meg wrote a couple of days ago about some of this, in her Open Love Letter that sure as hell made my day. She spoke of the birth of a new entity between us, love as a being of its own that has its own self, its own strrengths and vulnerabilities, and relationship-building as the nurturing of that entity above and beyond the individual persons. It’s a great image, and one that certainly resonates with me as a parent, as I imagine this being that is both of us and more than us and who we can either nurture or damage irrespective of what we think we are doing to ourselves.
So all this is in my mind as I count the days to a home that is ours together. And I think about the things that tend love. So often we talk about what brings us together, about the basic commonalities that make a relationship work. Common interests provide a basis for sharing daily activity. Some overlapping educational or professional histories provide the means to talk to one another rather than at one another about the ever-present mundane. Similar intelligences – emotional, psychological, whatever – make it just that much easier to communicate easily and effectively with one another. Shared life rhythms – from natural wake-up times to how one cooks and maintains a home – make the adjustment to shared space that much less contentious.
And all of this is true. All of this is important. All of this can make the difference between two lovers who find it easy to establish a shared life and two lovers who find it more challenging. We’ve talked about this alot, Meg and I, as we continue to discover how our similar patterns and similar assumptions somehow fit easily, so things that have in other relationships caused tension or reuired negotiation here just fall into place rather easily.
But that’s the basis. That’s the foundation. And while that is a necessary pre-requisite to a shared life, it is not necessarily sufficient. What is it that keeps things good? What is it that keeps a love vibrant and real? What is it that reminds us, every day, that this is the right place to be?
I don’t know the answer. But I guess for me it has alot to do with the little things, the little touches, the everyday gestures that seem insignificant in and of themselves but which over time can make all the difference.
Baths together every couple of days. Regular massages and times for touching. Lots of ‘I love yous’. Moments taken to stop, slow down, and just look each other in the eye. A few minutes at the end of each day to read to one another before drifting off to sleep.
These are small things. These are no great effort. But because of that, they are so easily forgotten. And it seems to me that it is in these little gestures, these hardly noticeable moments, that love and intimacy are continually renewed. It seems to me that it is these little things that ensure we fall asleep and wake up each day knowing that we are loved. It is these little things that make sure that the routine of daily life together emphasizes the together over the routine.
Yeah. I’m a sap. Yeah, no one really needs to read this stuff. But so what? It’s what’s on my mind, and it’s good.
