Happily Ever After, Revisited

In which plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Sunrise over Deep Creek, VA ~ August 2022

If I Should Fall Behind

We said we’d walk together, baby, come what may
That come the twilight should we lose our way
If as we’re walkin’ a hand should slip free
I’ll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me

We swore we’d travel, darlin’, side by side
We’d help each other stay in stride
But each lover’s steps fall so differently
But I’ll wait for you
And if I should fall behind
Wait for me

Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true
But you and I know what this world can do
So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
And I’ll wait for you
If I should fall behind
Wait for me

Now there’s a beautiful river in the valley ahead
There ‘neath the oak’s bough soon we will be wed
Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
I’ll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me
Darlin’, I’ll wait for you
Should I fall behind
Wait for me

— Bruce Springsteen

In May of 2021, reeling from heartbreak and facing a fractured, cloudy future, I wrote The Happily Ever After Manifesto. Surprisingly (even to me), it is not a bitter, crabbed renunciation of love and devotion and commitment. Not at all. In fact, it begins with one of my favorite quotes from all of literature:

“Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
- Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

From there, the essay challenges the Happily Ever After myth so many of us are sold on all our lives (“first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage…”), and then I build my own vision of a Happily Ever After:

I do not want to live with a man. Not ever again. I do not want to know how my partner folds his socks, or if he folds his socks. I do not want to fight with him about the correct way to load the dishwasher, or whose turn it is to take out the trash, or any of the passion-sucking daily squabbles that arise in every cohabiting relationship. I do not want to find myself suddenly “unable” to do the things I’ve been doing just fine on my own - household repairs, managing my budget - just because there’s a guy around who takes on those jobs. (Local friends: if you ever need an appliance repaired, give me a call! As long as there’s a YouTube tutorial, I can do it.) I do not want to commingle my finances with anyone. I do not want to suffer through tense meals with in-laws, although I’d happily share a lovely meal with lovely family members. I do not want someone else raising my kids with me – they have a wonderful father already and don’t need another one. Loving my kids and treating them with kindness are non-negotiable traits in a serious partner, but setting their screen-time limits and their curfew are not jobs that their dad and I need help with.

I want to be with someone I’m excited to spend a Saturday with, or many Saturdays, but who has his own things to do on Sunday. I want a partner who I can enjoy time with and feel connected to and passionate about, someone who lights me up and makes me laugh, who finds beauty in unexpected places and is excited to show me, who is curious about the world and full of wonder, who lives his (progressive!) values, and who is truly kind and compassionate. I want a man who prioritizes and commits to our relationship without being overly possessive; someone who doesn’t (wrongly!) think that our life commitments - to children or work or a romantic relationship - are a zero sum game in which only one commitment can be primary; and someone who won’t coldly cast me aside like some disposable Other Thing when he is done with me. I want someone who understands what he needs to do to live an emotionally healthy life, and is working every day to reach that goal. And I want to offer a shoulder to cry on, and cry on his shoulder when I need to, without those tears translating into the expectation that he must mend my life, or vice versa.

Well, maybe I am a witch or maybe I am just the luckiest damned woman alive, because wouldn’t ya know, within the year Ben appeared, and my vision became reality.

So here I am in the summer of 2024, and I will not be living with Ben, now, or any time in the foreseeable future. I am still a whiz with a toolbox and the right YouTube video. My money is my own, and his is his. I absolutely love his parents, and will share as many meals with them as I can, and he loves my dad (the feeling is mutual) and visits him with me as much as time allows, but we have each also allowed the other’s relationship with our families to grow and thrive naturally, without pressure. And - critically - we love each other’s kids and have built kind and supportive relationships across our families, but we leave the parenting to the parents and do not overstep or try to force a new parental relationship on any of them. This is certainly helped by the fact that my three kids and his three kids range in age from 9 to 18, and so it has been easier to acclimate them to our relationship than it might have been with younger children.

And - yes! - our Saturdays are exquisite, and I am excited for all the Saturdays to come, and - yes! - Sundays are mostly our own, to do with as each of us pleases, with little touches across the distance to keep a connected fire burning. And - yes! - he is everything I described and so much more, and new wonders appear all the time. He is a marvel I would swear I magicked into existence had he not the rich life history he is always learning from, and had he not - wonder of wonders - fully and freely chosen me.

But now I need a new paragraph - one that he and I have co-created, that tells the part of the story I did not and could not predict in May of 2021.

I need the paragraph that tells how this past weekend, on the most exquisite Saturday of all (so far!), I took him through my house, room by room, stopping to enjoy each of the sacred routines that bring quiet joy to our days, and stopping also to read some of his (exquisite) poems for me, and some of my poems for him, until we came to the tenth and final poem - the poem I had dreamed three weeks before, waking just enough to record the words on my phone.

And when I was finished, I asked him to marry me.

I need the paragraph, too, that tells how later that same day, he took me back to the first weekend of our relationship (both figuratively and geographically), stopping at each inflection point to read a beautiful, poetic chapter he had written, which brilliantly tied together all the threads that have woven through our days from then to now.

And when he was finished, he asked me to marry him.

Of course we both chose rings for each other made from ethically-sourced materials.

Finally, I need a paragraph that tells how we will write a new vision of the future - one where two people can marry each other but not live together; marry each other but not financially depend on each other; marry each other but not co-parent our stepchildren; marry each other under the law but also in a way not contemplated by any law; and - most importantly - marry each other with the same beautiful lifelong commitment as any marriage, made stronger by wisdom hard-won from experience, with open hearts and open eyes, and with a happiness tethered to the ground and to the stars. And this will be the best paragraph of all.

…Love ebbs and flows, rises and falls. We can love without grasping, lose without self-destructing, travel in and out of Marriageland without getting trapped at the border. The poet E.E. Cummings wrote, in one of my favorite love poems:

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

To close and unclose, to allow love in when love comes knocking, to let love go when the time comes, and to fold gently inward when solitude is our closest friend - this is the only Happily Ever After for me.