Eva

Before I got married, I often thought of marriage as a trap. About a week after my wedding, noticing no change in my relationship, I concluded that marriage was actually single life...with security.
That's not fair, of course, to the many for whom marriage is, or at least becomes, a trap. I know of somebody whose fiancee underwent a complete and total transformation after the ceremony. Once the marriage was consummated, she was suddenly an asexual being...and a bitch, to boot.
I also know of far too many people who've divorced...or who probably should...some of them have gone or are going through seven shades of holy hell.
Granted, we've only been married five and a half years. Despite having lived what feels like at least three lifetimes in that half-decade, it really hasn't been that long.
I'll be honest: only once has divorce ever reared its ugly head in that time. My wife offered me a divorce when it became clear our marriage would not be "fruitful"--God, what a silly phrase that is. Interestingly, immediately after that offer was made, I experienced another first: a burning urge to give my wife a smack. Our marriage vows--which were personalized--did make mention of children, but that was one clause amongst many considerably more important.
There are a myriad of reasons we are still happily married and expect to be for a long time to come. Paradoxically, one of the biggest is that we don't have expectations about our marriage. I've found in my life that expectations kill love. Sooner or later, they're not met...and then what?
Nope, no expectations here. In fact, every once in a while I'm surprised by some alien pocket of Eva-ness I never even suspected. (And I'm sure that every once in a blue moon I lob her a curve ball, too.) I can't say what she thinks as the curve ball floats in, but what goes through my mind as I examine the Great Mystery that is my wife is hey, another facet.
That's the thing about Eva: she's multifaceted, like the biggest diamond you can imagine. She knows quite a bit about a hell of a lot of things. Her parents, particularly her mom, regarded stupidity as a mortal sin, and so Eva has spent a lifetime guarding against appearing dumb. (Whereas I appear dumb at least once a day as a matter of principle.) There's very little she can't do, and as for her beliefs, they can be beastly hard to pin down. Eva has a rare gift of being able to convincingly argue every side of most issues. She would have been a killer debater. Maybe that's why the few things on which our attitudes diverge don't matter: she understands my thinking and accepts it even if on some level she also thinks I'm on crack.

The ubiquitous 'they' say that living together before marriage is a surefire route to divorce. What they neglect to mention is that this only applies if you don't consider yourselves married. As far as Eva and I were concerned, we were married on our third date; the ceremony fifteen months later was but a formality.

The biggest reason we're happily together, though, is that we communicate. About everything. The hot girl at my work, the budget-busting treat, the past, the present and the future, our lives together and our lives apart.

Things I've learned since I got married:

1) Jogging pants should not be worn outside the house. Check that: jogging pants probably shouldn't be worn, period.
2) Having somebody around to scratch your back isn't the only reason to get married, but it's a damned good one.
3) My wife doesn't "complete" me. I don't "complete" her. We're both complete human beings sharing the road.
4) If I'm pissed off, it's because of something I did, or said, or felt. Every time, without fail. It's never my wife's doing, no matter how eager I am to make it look that way.

I'd like to expand on this, because I feel like I've unwittingly written a Great Truth, while I'm sure many of my readers are thinking pussywhipped.

Sure, Eva's rarely wrong. That just comes with the territory when you marry someone more street-smart than you are. But I've noticed that absolutely every time I'm angry--at anyone or anything, not just my wife--if I'm able to take ten mental steps back and look at everything from a different angle, my anger melts. I discover that I can feel a different way about whatever's irking me...if I choose to. A great sage once said the meaning of life could be expressed in two words: choose again.

5) Every day I choose again to be with my wife. Every day the choice feels logical, sane, right. So our marriage is always changing, and yet always the same. It moves through time even as it is rooted in eternity. I've learned that my head will wrap around such New-Agey claptrap...then believe it...then make it real.

I've learned how to love.

Eva, I love you.