Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Groom Gripes

Maybe it's because his tie cut off circulation to his brain yesterday when he was required to wear a suit to be granted an audience with the world's squarest client, but this morning my husband woke up inspired to pair the handsome paisley tie he'd bought for the meeting-o-stiffs with a shirt that rocks a swirl pattern best described as rich-people wall paper.

"How's this for awesomeness?" he said with a goofy grin as he showed off his outfit before he left for the day. "And why are you laughing?"

I told him the same thing I'd said when he asked me why I was laughing the night he brought the shirt home: I'm giggling because those blue loop-de-loops might as well spell out Mike.

It wasn't always this way.

The first real fight we had as a couple* was over the shirt he was wearing to dinner. I can't remember what the thing looked like, but I remember my very visceral certainty that it was ratty enough he needed to change into something respectable, like now. He wondered what the Man had done with his girlfriend, and could he expect she'd be returning any time soon?

At the time I believed that the secret to love and friendship was some strange calculus that involved figuring out the least painful way to morph myself into that person's ideal friend or partner. Because of that, I wasted a lot of my college years positioning myself as the brunt of the joke and lost track of the me pursuing we after we.

But Mike was different.

He turned my head the first time because he begged off of a lame Pink Floyd laser show at the Museum of Science. Later he said he just wasn't interested, and I was floored that he'd a) think it was better to be alone than do whatever the rest of the gang was doing, and b) actually choose to be alone. And yes, I do realize it's a testament to my extreme late bloom that college me needed to be reminded that spending an evening alone is always a viable option.

Fast forward to Mike and me as a new couple. Every bit of our early friction stemmed from my backward idea that to love someone was to change and be changed--the more drastic the shift, the deeper the passion or some such horseshit. I was a slow to grasp the radical idea that real connection was about finding the person who loved me enough to leave me space to find my life while also staying close enough to embrace the life I chose.

I was so used to letting people tell me which way to turn that being with a man who lobbed that choice back to me again and again and again was terrifying. But you can't be a partner without standing on your own. And if you come into a relationship young and superbly confused, you can't learn to stand on your own unless your partner loves you enough to trust that you'll figure it out. It took me a ridiculous amount of time for it to dawn on me that though Mike will carry me through nothing, he'll walk beside me through anything. And it took me even longer to recognize that for the priceless gift that it is.

So now, married a year and a half, when I get frustrated with him about some little stupid something, I'm grateful. OK, maybe not in the exact moment that he's using my nerves as a trampoline, but in the bigger picture, I'm thankful for the gripes I have with my groom. Because if he's annoying me, that means we're partners, not clones. It means I've married someone who understands that true partnership is about the health of its individuals and that the health of its individuals is about loving a person enough to let her figure out who she is for herself. The best I can do is offer the same gift to him.

Even if that means a closet full of wild and wacky prints.

* Have my husband and I really been together more than twelve years??