Over twenty years...

Susan and have been married 20 years as of October 2015. There are times when we wonder where those 20 years have gone. And sometimes I don't remember a time in my life when she wasn't in it, even though she wasn't for the first 50 years or so. It's become that kind of relationship. Now I can't picture my life without her.

She warned me all those years ago. She'd been single for 25 years or so and had her checklist. For instance, she was determined she'd never have a relationship with someone who had never "been anywhere". She, of course, so worldly from her twenty years or so in California while I'd been growing moldy in Brattleboro all my life. No, my time in the Coast Guard didn't count.

She invited me over and cooked a nice supper when we were first spending time together and afterwards, we sat in the living room where she told me stories, stories of her life growing up in Keene, her first marriage and how it ended, her move to San Francisco where she shared a house with a lot of other people, her move out of the city to Sonoma County, the year and a half she and her kids lived in an army tent with no electricity, some of the people who had been in her life over those years, along with some decidedly unpleasant episodes. It was as if she was trying to find the story that would scare me off before we got too close.

Driving home that night I thought, well, there were a lot of choices in those stories that I wouldn't have made but none of it had anything to do with me. I also knew that if I let any of it get in the way I'd probably be missing an awfully good time.

So we had supper again the next weekend. This time we talked about what we might look for in a relationship. Susan ticked off several things, including her insistence in absolute monogamy.

"No problem," I said. I'd managed that for over 30 years in my first marriage and for the heat I took I should have been having a hell of a lot more fun.

"So here's what I want," I said. "I've got a lot of friends who are women. I want to be open with those friendships, I want to be affectionate with them, and I don't want to hear about it."

"Fine," she said. "Some of my closest  women friends have come through men I've known. Bring them on."

She warned me she was high maintenance. I'm not sure what she had in mind with that statement but I've come to know that if I tried to control her she certainly would be. But why would I do that? Why would I try to change the very things that attracted me to her in the first place? That makes no sense at all.

Oh. And I wanted to be equal. We used to get these books full of personality tests and take them just to see how close we thought they came. One of them had an IQ test. We took it. When we totaled the scores we were just exactly even, not in all areas, but overall we were equal. An it was then we both realized how lucky that was because if one of us had a couple points on the other we'd have probably never heard the end of it.

And it's worked. We've had occasional challenges and we've faced them together. We've traveled, we've moved to California and then to England and then back to the US. We've created new communities and circles of friends wherever we've gone. We're both free to pursue our own interests, either singly or bringing the other along. And we make each other laugh every day.

I get to go to bed with her, too.

Twenty years ago we both hoped for this.

And here it is.