When my wife Sophia and I first announced our engagement, we were surprised when it was met with a muted response from friends and family. They said things like: we were too young, we hadn’t seen enough of life, we would grow to change and possibly resent each other. Well nobody said marriage would be easy. But neither of us have ever seen why it has to be a chore. After ten years, we still manage to keep the spark of romance alive through simple things, like movie nights, hiking, and making sure we spend at least four hours a night relentlessly talking shit and mocking every single person we know.
Yes, after a long day at work or a terrible commute home there is nothing we would rather do than curl up together, pour a couple glasses of wine and absolutely drag our ugly-ass friends, disgusting neighbors, and mentally unstable family members through the mud. Like Sophia’s old college roommate Laura, who just gave birth. Well good luck to her and her husband, I guess, what a blessing, you have the ugliest baby we have ever seen. This kid makes the “Friday Night Lights” baby look like the fucking Gerber baby.
Sometimes we like to be adventurous. We took a couples’ Italian cooking class and learned to make veal scallopini. Then, on the way home, we made fun of the other couple there (who, by the way, would’ve done better in a diet program than a cooking class) who spent the entire time taking little shots at each other. We’d never do that. Our love is stronger than their love. Our love is the best love.
On weekends, if the weather behaves, we’ll sometimes like to go out to state parks, or the beach and hike around. The fresh air, beautiful nature and secluded paths give us exactly the space we need to get away from it all. And talk shit. Like we do about our neighbor Phil, who has a noticeable, multinodular goiter on his neck. “I can’t even look at a grapefruit without thinking of it,” my wife tells me. And we laugh and laugh.
There’ve been difficult times too, of course. I’ll say it again people: MARRIAGE IS WORK! But even after arguments, blow-ups, and screaming matches, we’ve still never gone to bed angry. At each other. Because at heart, whether it’s my alcoholic stepfather Dave or Sophia’s co-worker Judy, whose husband cheats on her, we can always find someone else to take things out on. And we’ve never been happier.