On marriage and monogamy

It is my 18th wedding anniversary tomorrow.

I married Tom at 25, met him at 23 and had Jonah at 24. Ava followed at 27, and Lana at 38.

It’s been a rollercoaster, with the lows often outweighing the highs. I’ve never really talked about my marriage or the circumstances surrounding the time I met my husband, but it’s out there, tucked away on little corners of the internet where I believe my corporate overlords will never stumble upon it. Not that it’s really anyone’s business, anyway.

To say Tom is my cup of tea is to stretch the metaphor. He is, and always will be, the antidote to life’s stresses, though occasionally he is too hot, cold, sweet, or I’ve just had too much caffeine that day. But he is never not acceptable. He is as reliable and friendly as my favourite beverage, which he promised to make me whenever I asked, all those years ago. It was the dealbreaker. I knew he was it.

Nothing’s changed in that time. But that’s not to say I haven’t. Capricious as the proverbial goat, I wax and wane along with the moon, my heightened sensitivity to tiny fluctuations meaning I need Tom’s basalt steadiness to stay abreast of my own tendency to dash myself against obstacles and obstinacies. He never changes, though I noticed just yesterday, the steel grey of his encroaching years has now almost turned to white.

He’s going nowhere, not without me. I know this, though his thoughts and fingers have occasionally strayed as I have danced around him, testing and re-testing his unwavering faith to what some might consider unacceptable boundaries. And yet we remain inviolate.

We have reached a rather sweet spot, where I, burned out by corporate mimicry and proving myself over and over and over again, he, conversely has nothing left to prove and so, awaiting his big boy job, we find ourselves suddenly unemployed, but financially stable. A summer stretches ahead of us for waving off our firstborn son and relaxing into the empty-nested future.

Amid the loft clearance, the driving lessons, the exam queries and the demands for Minecraft assistance (from the little one, obviously) we are tasting the first sweet drops of financial freedom. The mortgage only has a few years left to run thanks to the Trump bump of this past December.

I celebrated our windfall by mobile, wrapped in the bedsheet of my lover, my first, only truelove headfuck of my childhood and adolescent dreams. I cried in relief, while Kai- teenage dream turned aging alcoholic, sipped a morning cider. Let’s face it, it was never going to work. but not before I had thrown away my career (and almost, almost, my family) on the alter of my erstwhile teenage crush.

And with the tumultuous end of this emotional, then physical affair, we – that is, Tom and I – finally had time to take stock of all we have accomplished.

Most notably, remaining, against all odds and the challenges we have faced, still, remarkably, in love.

But, lest ye judge (and I suspect you do), consider this. You never tire of tea, though occasionally only a Bloody Mary will do at the height of summer, even if it is only 11am. But once that thirst is slaked, only tea will bring you back round to normality.