I’m married to a realist. He just can’t help himself. It’s crucial that every pathway of our lives, every decision, every conversation be grounded in what is true, what can be proven, and what is logical. It’s noble really. As a logic-lover myself, I find it quite endearing. Until I get to the part where I try to reveal the small free spirit that lives somewhere deep within me: the girl who longs for nonsensical dance parties in the kitchen, dessert for breakfast, and long drives to nowhere simply for the sake of going.
It’s in these moments of finding myself completely misunderstood by the person I’ve chosen to walk beside for the rest of my days, that I wonder, “Is there room for spontaneity, absurdity, and happenstance in a relationship like this? Can two people who are largely rooted in the stable and the known ever experience the enchantment of the unexpected?”
And then I remember who I’m married to. Yes, I’m married to the lover of familiar and routine, but I’m also married to the man who met up a group of Colombians in DC, a city he’d never visited before, and went clubbing on U Street until the wee hours of the night. The man who befriended an elderly woman on the street in East Tennessee when we asked him to hop out of the car and direct a trailer we were backing up; in the 30 seconds it took for us to make the loop back to him, she had already invited him into her house for water. The man who accidentally went on a date with a 40 year old woman in Denver and ended up at Goth Night at a local bar.
When I think on these things, I realize that I’m most certainly the stringent one, I’m the one who won’t bend from routine, I’m the one who is closed to possibility. But more than anything, I am lucky. Lucky to be married to someone with a much kinder face than mine (#RBFproblems), a fearlessness about being the first one to say hello, and an unwavering curiosity toward others.
Sometimes I don’t understand it, how he can just be so kind to someone he’s not familiar with? How he can be so giving to someone who may never give it back? How he can be so authentically him with someone he doesn’t know yet? When I asked him about it one time, he told me, “Whenever I meet someone new, I just assume that we’re going to be friends.”
Thank you for being my friend, for letting me into your world. A world full of the kind of vulnerability amongst strangers that breeds happenstance, magic, and ultimately love.