My darling,
I have been pondering that sticky subject that new couples, freshly pierced by Cupid’s arrow, sometimes mention in passing. It is a cherished institution, yet one that strikes fear into the hearts of divorcees everywhere. I am speaking, of course, of marriage.
I have been thinking about it because you once mentioned it casually, and I responded with my usual cool skepticism, declaring that I did not want to rush into anything. Understandable, perhaps, considering that I have been married and divorced twice. When one has been burned, one tends to avoid touching the same hot stove again.
And yet, even as I disparaged marriage—that great institution of relational superglue—even as my mouth expressed doubt, my heart was leaping for joy. Not because I consider marriage itself perfect or sacred, but because, when you boil it down, it is a legal and binding contract between two people. But what made my heart leap was the thought that you could envision spending the rest of your life with me. You, such a capable, intelligent, kind, and beautiful woman, would choose me, of all people.
I think I regard you so highly and admire so much of what you have accomplished in your life that I may never completely grow accustomed to the idea of being someone you would choose. Flattered? Absolutely. I was flattered by the mere mention of the M word. But beyond that, I was honored.
It took me several days to become completely honest with myself, and then with you, about what I really felt. The truth was that I wanted that possibility with you. I did not want to protect myself from it. I did not want to build another fortress around my heart just when someone had appeared who made me want to open the gates.
It is a perfectly normal human defense mechanism to avoid whatever has hurt us most. Divorce ranks among life's most stressful experiences, alongside the death of someone we love. In its own way, divorce is a kind of emotional death: the death of a commitment, the death of a shared future, and the death of the dreams two people once held together.
When a marriage dies, the couple's collective dreams often die with it, and two hearts that once promised to travel through life together must find their separate ways. It all sounds so clinical in divorce papers, doesn't it? A few signatures, a legal decree, and the division of assets. But when you actually live through it, you discover that it is one of the most devastating losses a person can endure. Some people never fully recover. It took me six years to process everything that happened in my marriage. Six years to sift through the rubble, to discover which pieces of myself had survived, and to gather the salvageable fragments with which I could begin rebuilding a life.
And then, along came you.
I was not looking for someone worthy of marriage. I was simply hoping to escape the occasional boredom of single life, perhaps enjoy a little lighthearted flirtation, and remind myself that romance had not entirely abandoned the planet. But when a woman of your caliber walks into your life, you cannot treat the encounter lightly. To do so would make you a blind fool, incapable of distinguishing real gold from something merely spray-painted to resemble it.
I knew you were the real thing the moment I saw your photograph. I will never forget my favorite picture of you, which remains my favorite to this day: that beautiful smile worn by a beautiful soul, standing confidently in your work jumpsuit, boots, and hard hat, a tool belt resting on your hip. And somehow, despite all that practical machinery and industrial toughness, you still looked wonderfully feminine and sparkly. Because that is who you are. You contain all these apparent contradictions and somehow make them belong together.
Then I heard your voice for the first time, with its soft, calm tones and charming accent. And then there was your laugh, shy and sexy at the same time. That was when I truly lost my head over you. Your voice has perhaps been the most magnetic force of all. Sound possesses a power that can surpass even physical beauty. A voice can reach places in the heart that the eyes have not yet discovered. It can soothe, enchant, awaken, and draw two people toward one another across distances that seem otherwise impossible to bridge.
Somewhere along this road of getting to know you, I began to realize that I could never bear the thought of losing you. To lose a treasure one has spent a lifetime hoping for would be beyond tragic. It would feel like the end of hope itself. And that is why I have been contemplating a return to the scene of the crime, so to speak: the place where I last abandoned my hopes and dreams of experiencing true communion with another soul.
Because the truth is that we all fear commitment, and perhaps we have good reason to. But I have come to realize that there is something I fear even more than the possibility of being hurt again: The thought of losing you.
You are considerably younger than I am, although, between the two of us, you are undoubtedly the more responsible and practical one. I can be bouncy, silly, and frivolous at times. I am perfectly capable of turning a serious moment into an opportunity for mischief, and I suspect you have already discovered that there is a rather irrepressible child living inside me.
But both of us are necessary in this little universe we are creating.
The sun would be overwhelming without the cool moon to temper its beams. The moon, in turn, has its own mysterious beauty, but it would be a very different world without the sun's warmth and light. We complement one another in ways that neither of us could accomplish alone. And yet, while your temperament may be more like the quiet moon, the sun has lived a little longer and witnessed more devastation. It remembers shining before the moon was drawn into its orbit. It remembers planets that appeared and disappeared, sometimes before anyone had the chance to understand what they meant. So the thought of calling another planet mine is risky business indeed.
This is the difficulty with commitment. It is risky because it involves an exchange, a two-way street upon which both people must be willing to travel. Partnership asks each person to contribute, to give, to compromise, and to remain present even when the road becomes difficult. Equality between two people is not always easy to achieve. Sometimes one person gives more than the other, and sometimes the imbalance goes unnoticed until disappointment has quietly accumulated in the corners of the relationship.
Marriage, then, is a gamble. You wager your heart, your finances, your energy, your time, and your dreams, hoping the other person will reciprocate in kind. And because human beings are gloriously, maddeningly imperfect, we will inevitably disappoint one another at times, even when our love is genuine. One might reasonably conclude that marriage is not always a particularly winning proposition.
So why do we do it?
Because when you find the person who matches your heart, the treasure you have been searching for, you want to do everything within your power to hold on to what you have found. Not because marriage can guarantee that you will never lose someone. We both know that no such guarantee exists. We have lived long enough to understand that promises, however sincere, cannot control every circumstance life throws at us.
But when the heart, after an exhaustive search, finally recognizes its mate, something inside it says, Hold on. Hold on, even if logic protests. Hold on, even if the odds seem improbable. Hold on, even if the distance between you appears too great or your histories suggest that you should know better.
Love does not always look before it leaps. It sees the great divide. It recognizes the danger. It knows perfectly well that there is a possibility of falling, and yet the promise of being completely known, completely seen, and deeply loved proves irresistible. So it leaps. Sometimes it lands on its feet like a cat with nine lives. Other times, it tumbles spectacularly, picks itself up, and wonders what on earth it was thinking.
But have you noticed something remarkable? Love always wins in the end.
Perhaps not always in the form we expect. Perhaps not always according to the timetable we have chosen. But love itself continues. It survives disappointment, crosses borders, outlasts generations, and finds ways to express itself even when circumstances seem determined to silence it. We are built for love. It is woven into the fabric of our humanity. If love did not keep finding a way to prevail, I suspect our species would have destroyed itself long ago. And when the object of our affection is separated from us, the enchanted heart does not necessarily surrender. Distance may inconvenience it, frighten it, and occasionally make it behave like an overwrought fool, but it cannot always persuade the heart to abandon what it knows to be precious. The heart believes in love, sometimes long before the mind can explain why.
And love, in its own mysterious way, keeps finding a way forward. Each passing year confirms this truth for me. And I believe it will be true for us, too. We will face our share of obstacles: distance, our age difference, financial challenges, and whatever other hurdles life decides to place in our path. We will have practical matters to resolve and difficult days to navigate. I am not so starry-eyed that I imagine love will magically remove every obstacle. But I believe that what we have gives us a reason to face those obstacles together.
You may be familiar with the concept of entropy in physics, the tendency of systems to move toward disorder. Left to themselves, things wear down, disperse, and eventually lose the structures that once held them together. I would like to challenge that idea, at least metaphorically, on behalf of love. For love seems to possess a peculiar ability to expand rather than diminish. The more deeply we know someone, the more layers there are to discover. The more experiences we share, the richer our history becomes. Even time, which takes so much from us, can give something back in the form of understanding, tenderness, and the kind of intimacy that cannot be manufactured overnight. Love may not be exempt from the laws of physics, darling, but it seems determined to make its own argument against the idea that everything meaningful must eventually decay.
And so it will be with us, I hope. Our love will grow in depth and meaning as the years pass. Our hearts will continue finding their way toward one another, sometimes leaping before looking, perhaps, but always learning how to grow together. Like a seed that knows, without possessing a scientific understanding of botany, to reach toward the light, we will discover what we need in order to flourish. We will have our sunshine and our moonlight, our seasons of growth and our seasons of rest. We will learn that love is not merely a feeling we stumble upon, but something we nurture, protect, and choose again and again.
And perhaps, one day, we will do what lovers throughout history have done when they discover a treasure they cannot bear to lose. Perhaps we will confront our insecurities and our fears. Perhaps we will dare to defy the lessons of our pasts and reach for one another with the most memorable and romantic of all human promises:
Marriage. There. I have said it without fainting, running for the hills, or requesting immediate legal counsel.
Because this love feels so alive, so special, so urgent, and so wonderfully right. It feels natural. It feels as though something that has been waiting patiently for us has finally found its moment. Dare I say it feels destined? I suspect it does. And if we are indeed being held in the steady palm of destiny's hand, as I rather suspect we are, then I can imagine only one glorious conclusion for us.
For the sun and the moon are a pair, two celestial bodies belonging to the same magnificent universe. They are different in their natures, different in their rhythms, and different in the ways they illuminate the world. Yet each has its place in the great dance of existence. Neither needs to become the other to make the heavens complete.
And perhaps that is what we are discovering, my darling. We need not be identical to belong together. We need not have lived the same number of years, traveled the same roads, or learned our lessons in the same way. We need only to keep turning toward one another, with honesty, tenderness, and the courage to believe that what we are building is worth the risk. Sometimes I think that what we are hearing is the strong, persistent throbbing of a single heart, beating beneath two very different lives.
So keep listening, my love. Mine beats for you.
And I will always need the calm, the mystery, and the quiet beauty of the moon. I will need your steadiness, your intelligence, your kindness, and that wonderful voice that somehow manages to reach me even when you are far away. I can only hope that you will always need my warmth, my laughter, my occasional silliness, and my light with the same urgency.
I cannot promise that we will never be afraid. I cannot promise that the road will always be easy. But I can promise that I am willing to stop guarding my heart against the possibility of happiness simply because I have known sorrow before. I am willing to believe in us.
And today, tomorrow, and for all the days we are fortunate enough to share, I want us to remember this: The future may be uncertain. The distance may be great. The risks may be real. But love is worth the leap. Believe in that today, my darling, and always.
Our love will win.
Always,
Your poet