On The Same Team: Marriage Three Years In
Marriage has always been both contract and covenant, paperwork and poetry — and I’ve come to see both sides up close. A structure to keep lives together on paper: taxes, health insurance, property deeds, and a leap of faith that someone will keep showing up when it’s not easy.
Historically, marriage erased women. Austen’s heroines weighed love against fortune; generations of wives gave up their names, their property, sometimes their sense of self. I didn’t take his last name. Not out of rebellion per se, but because I’d spent thirty years learning how to be myself before choosing to be someone else. More practically, because I had just renewed my passport.
The best part of this marriage is that I haven’t had to change. I stayed myself, and in doing so, we both became better.
In late January 2019, I was back in Connecticut, home from grad school in Buenos Aires, watching the snow pile against the windows. The seasons were reversed in my life then — summer down south, winter at home — and I was restless. One night I sighed, downloaded Bumble, and told myself: you deserve one date.
Somewhere between small talk and jokes about travel, he hit me with a question that stopped me: what are your relationship deal breakers? I remember thinking: screw it, he doesn’t know me, maybe I’ll never even meet him. I might as well be honest.
“If we’re in a relationship, I’m your partner. Not a psychiatrist, not a life coach, not a maid, not your mom. You’ll have your life together, I’ll have mine, and we’ll take the world as it comes.”
Silence. Then, a reply: “Agree. Mine is any vain girl taking too many Instagram selfies.”
It wasn’t the smoothest line, but it was real. And something in that honesty carried us through. It set the tone: honesty over performance, even when it was awkward. That first exchange became a kind of blueprint for how we’d communicate with each other.
Our first date wasn’t drinks — he was doing Dry January, and I was grateful. After a few relationships that relied a little too much on booze, this felt like a reprieve. Instead we sat and talked for four hours. I was leaving again in a month, but he said, “If you’re willing to make this work, I am.” By April, he had a ticket to Argentina. By September, I was finagling my way into a semester in DC — my “fake study abroad.”
And by March 2020, when the world shut down, he came down to my apartment for “two weeks” to see how it might be. He never left. It was either going to be very good or very bad. Somehow, it turned out to be the former.
During that spring we walked the Mall at sunrise to keep ourselves sane. In April 2021, on one of those same walks, he knelt down and asked me to marry him. My parents were there to celebrate. 4/3/21.
Of course, it hasn’t been all roses. I once tried cutting his hair during lockdown, and the moment the shaver buzzed too short I knew I’d made a mistake. I leave socks in every corner. I never throw away my contacts properly. He snacks on sunflower seeds, which I call “bugs” when I find the shells stashed in cups. His style once leaned dangerously Vineyard Vines and bought his first pair of jeans in 2022.
But here’s what makes this marriage feel like home: it’s the first time I’ve felt safe enough in a relationship to fall apart. It looks like crying at the kitchen sink without explaining, saying, “I can’t do this today” without keeping score, letting go of strength or cheer without worrying it will change how he sees me. A kind of safety I didn’t even know how to look for, and one I don’t take for granted.
I grew up Catholic, with weddings framed as sacrament, permanence, “love is patient, love is kind.” But when it came time to plan mine, we skipped Corinthians. Our friends read Pablo Neruda and Mary Oliver. We wove in family traditions.
When we wrote our vows, we ended on the same line without knowing the other had written it: at the end of the day, we’re on the same team. That’s still what steadies us. Health scares, the loss of loved ones, layoffs, miserable jobs — we know we’re speaking from a place of love, even when the words are hard.
For me, marriage is the practice of presence. Not a grand gesture, but a daily rhythm: long walks at sunrise, cooking dinner together, traveling to a new city just to sit in a café with nothing but coffee between us. A daily refrain. Of socks, bugs, cooking, and laughing. It’s weathering illnesses, deaths, layoffs, bad jobs, and still carrying the knowledge — I’m not alone in this.
The small life we build over and over. The quiet certainty of being on the same team.