Une Parfait Demande En Mariage à Paris

This past winter, E and I went to Europe. While planning our trip to London, Piza, Florence, Venice and Paris, E insisted that Paris, France be the last leg of our three country journey. This resulted in my 23rd birthday falling on our last night in one of the most romantic cities on earth. To celebrate, E and I spent the day touring the amazing palace of Versailles, one of the most magnificent palaces we'd seen on our trip.

Me in front of Versailles 

E in the garden of Versailles

Marrying Your Sweetheart: The Sexy Time Episode

Warning: This post contains discussion of sex. Grown ups only.

In March I will be marrying my high school sweetheart. This also means that in March, I will be marrying the only person I've ever had sex with, or cared to have sex with, although he's not the only person I've dated. For a lot of people, this is a difficult concept to grasp. I'm not religious, not shy, and certainly not a prude. I firmly believe in sex before marriage, gay rights, I'm pro-choice, and all the other things you'd not normally associate with someone who marries their only lover. I don't really know what it is about him, or how exactly it happened, but something clicked for us and we never looked back.

Marrying Your Sweetheart: Beds and Attachment Dating

As I've said, my honey and I have been together for 8 and a half years. Looking back on our past, you can trace the progression of our relationship through the beds we've shared together. When we first started dating we saw each other sporadically. After we became a couple, while I was in high school, we would see each other on Tuesday nights and over the weekends. I used to have late start on Wednesday mornings so my honey would spend the night on a blow up mattress next to the full size bed my grandma gave me and hang out a bit in the mornings. After my first year of college in the dorms where we occasionally tried to squish onto the extra long lofted twin, we moved in together, living like vagabonds a couple years here and a couple there. First we shared my honey's bed from his high school years, then a futon from when his dad was in college in a room that was ours instead of just his. At my mom's house it was a futon from a friend that my honey and our best friend broke when they jumped on it in my old bedroom. Finally, the room was redone and we got a bed that was ours.

Through this time I think I can count on my fingers, maybe my toes, the number of nights we've spent apart. We never intended to be "that" couple, the one that's always together and mushy mushy gag. The stars just kind of aligned and it happened. A few days in Oregon visiting family. A few days in Santa Cruz after we had our biggest and most difficult fight. A night apart for my friend's girls only pre-wedding party. Somehow, no matter what happens, at the end of the day we end up in the same bed. It's like we've been sleeping in the same bed for so long that it's become a "thing" and now it seems silly and wrong to break it. We may have never intended it to happen but we definitely go out of our way now to make sure it stays that way now, after so many years how can we not? After all the futons and dorm beds, our bed is big, comfy and red with too many pillows and an oversized down comforter. Sleeping on it is like sinking into a cloud and it makes me feel home, or at least as home as we can be before we're in our own home.

I know it's not always practical to be joined at the hip as my mom accuses us of being, but it's what's natural for us. We feel most right coming together at night, even if it means crawling into bed at 3am exhausted just so we can sleep next to each other. Mornings when I wake up and he's already gone would bum me out except there's usually a kitty there in his spot looking for a cuddle. Since our beds and homes have been kind of inconsistent, we have really made our home in each other. That sounds sappy but no matter what arguments we have, come morning we always end up with our oversized comforter skewed, legs tangled and pillows squished up against the wall. When we go on road trips we travel like gypsies with a big red back up quilt and tons of pillows.

When we finally move out I'm sure our bed will be transformed again. We have a full sized bed frame in our garage that matches our antique bedroom set that needs to be adjusted to fit our queen sized bed. We've had our beloved red bedding since I started college, replaced once with the same set again. If our wedding registry is followed we'll be upgrading to a more sophisticated version of the big red bed, one that will hopefully represent a new chapter in our life together. I just hope that no matter where we go or what bed we sleep in we continue to spend our nights together fighting over the blankets, and that we never have to spend more than a few nights apart.

Marrying Your Sweetheart: The Meet The Couple Episode

As mentioned in my previous post, my honey and I have been together for a cool eight years. This is longer than most people I know have been married, and every day that passes that we don't strangle each other/throw a fit/accidentally kick each other in the face I count as a success. We're an unlikely pair if I've ever seen one, the cooking and animal loving Bio and English major with the sport obsessed, equally passionate and lazy cinema and television major somehow coexisting in relative harmony. I attribute our success to my love of cooking, his love of eating, and our mutual love of chocolate covered pretzels. But really, it's more like a weird system of give and take, lots of mistakes and our mutual love of arguing that's most likely to blame for our relationship (If I wasn't so set on being a doctor I could easily become a lawyer, just so I could be paid to debate are argue all day long). That and my cat liked him, which went a long way in his favor.

A Friend's Birthday Party, August 2004

While we've been dating for eight years, we've actually known each other since we were about 7 or 8. As a tomboy, I found his pillow fighting skills satisfactory, his tree climbing skills acceptable and most importantly his video gaming skills entertaining enough to merit an easy going friendship. His green/blue eyes, sandy blonde hair and baby chubby cheeks did nothing for me, the ultimate boy child, until we reached 15 and 16, something clicked and he turned on the charm.

In high school he was pursuing a career in film, absolutely convinced he would be the next famous director. He had written many mostly sport related scripts (I kinda hate sports), including a short feature that he asked me to play a part in. Despite my complete lack of interest in acting (or any acting skills for that matter) I agreed, and we spent a few days a week together that summer running around my house with his mini DV camera. Little did I know the film was more of an opportunity to get close to me, a fact I probably should have realized upon reading the repeated "kissing" scenes in the script between the dashing athlete and his bride. Add in a heavy dash teenage hormones, a pinch of attraction, stir counter clockwise with 2 cups of water, and BAM! Instant relationship.

Senior Portraits for High School, 2005

Somehow, we made it through going to different high schools on opposite sides of Los Angeles. I didn't drive but he did, so he used to drive over Tuesday nights since I didn't have class until 9am on Wednesday. We made it through going to two different colleges, pursuing wildly different career paths. He screwed up once when I first left for college, and while I've always taken a hard line of zero tolerance on cheating, I eventually forgave him (even if I wasn't able to forget his indiscretion). We grew up, made mistakes together and somehow our continuously changing goals and personalities continue to match up. My mother has this snarky saying she likes to throw around when we've done (or not done) something, "playing house". According to her, we've been playing house for 8 years, pretending at a relationship because two teenagers, then two twenty somethings, couldn't possibly have what it takes to make a relationship work.

Now, this time next year we will be married. I'm not sure if that will make our relationship any less "playing house" to my mother, but I'm excited to begin a new phase of our lives. I still don't like sports and he still isn't thrilled by my aquariums, but we still like to argue and together we somehow manage to make it work. I can't imagine being with someone who doesn't drive me as bat shit crazy as he does, and his life would be a lot more difficult without me reminding him to be his best self.

Maid of Honor's Wedding, 2010