What It’s Like Realizing You’ve Found The One

What makes you realize you’re going to be with a guy for the rest of your life? Is it the way that he smiles at you over dinner? The way that he softly brushes the hair behind your ear before he kisses you? The way he talks in his sleep and sometimes wakes himself up and trails off?

Or maybe it was the way that he held you the first time. Or the fifth time. Or the hundred and tenth time. How he let you cry about whatever was going on in your life over the phone like he didn’t have better things to do for those four hours. Or maybe how he told you he loved you the first time, even though he was drunk and foolish and sixteen.

Sometimes, things just click. The key in the lock you didn’t know you were waiting to hear. The soft whispers in your ear right before you have to part ways, again. The way that he looks at you when you’re naked, not like something to be tossed aside, but something to be desired. The soliloquy the first time you have sex about how he knows he wants to spend the rest of his life with you even though you made him wait six years for that first time.

Or maybe it’s the more obvious. The ring on your left hand that says “I promise you my heart and my life.” The bold way that he told your mom he was going to marry you, and how you just sat back and thought “wow that was ballsy as hell.”

There will be stormy times too. The times when you don’t quite know if this is real. The times when you have to pinch yourself because you think you’re dreaming. The times when you worry that something else is going on, because let’s face it, this is life. This isn’t a fairytale, and you’ve never been a princess dear. Something has to go wrong, right?

You’ve never been good at commitments, not for any reason but the fact that you were young and afraid. You might have witnessed your mom and dad getting divorced. You might have watched someone die. Marriage and love, they’re not concrete. They’re ever changing, ever evolving. They are like the Earth itself, something big, something more, something you can’t even conjure a word for. And shit, you’re a writer. You have a word for everything.

When you realize that some people are truly worth risking it all for… that is when you’ve found the person that you could spend the rest of your life with. “You jump, I jump Jack.” When you’re completely comfortable with the decision that one choice could literally change the rest of your life, and you don’t care… that’s how you know. The gut feeling when you look at him, “this is it. This is what you’ve wanted your whole life.”

It’s not settling, not making this choice. It’s just another great adventure. You’ve just chosen the ultimate partner in crime to go the long haul with you.