In roughly five months, I will have been married for four years. For someone who never thought she would get married, this is kind of a big deal. I always pictured myself gallivanting through grand adventures all by my onesies, but I’m happily surprised that I enjoy having a partner in crime. Who else would clean the litterbox and kill all the spiders** for me? I jest–except for the spider bit.

I never joke about spiders.

If you were to ask Spiderbane–and yes, I actually call him that–about how we met, he would say that we met in college and that I hated him, which is true but only half the story. The details really aren’t pertinent to this post, but we did have a falling out during our senior year. We made up because he bought me coffee–so Seattle–and then maybe five months after we graduated we started casually dating. Fairly soon, we knew we would get married, and voila, a year and a half later, we were standing on the deck of a friend’s boat in Lake Union, promising to love and cherish each other with a pirate battle raging in the background.

I wasn’t joking about the pirate battle.

Since that day, we’ve been co-conspirators, best friends with benefits for life, and the slaves of two adorable and ridiculously demanding felines. We’ve been through family drama. We got jobs together. We moved to SE Seattle. We were laid off together. Somehow, we were even unofficially adopted into a Filipino community. (Salamat, aunties and uncles and cousins and siblings!)

All of these details have made for a very rich few years, but what I really want to talk about is the man himself, my Spiderbane with the perma-freckles around his eyes and the slight gap between his two front teeth. He is the kind of friend that makes me feel safe and secure but who also shows emotion. His capacity for empathy and compassion speaks to his heart for other people, even though he has stepped on others’ toes. (When he realizes that he’s hurt someone, he’s a total wreck.) Beyond his sensitivity, he can be very wise.

But better than all that is his sense of humor. We can laugh for days, and I can always pick his laugh out of a crowd. It’s a laugh without restraint that borders on heehawing. I love it. 🙂

There are a lot of things that we have in common–a heart for working with other people, our introversion, a love of books, similar nuclear and extended family structures–but we have our differences too. Spiderbane is mostly left-brained while I am mostly right-brained. I love to watch movies and tv shows–stories!–and he gets too invested emotionally and prefers to avoid them altogether. (He makes occasional exceptions for “The IT Crowd.”) I prefer video games, and he prefers computer games. 😉 He grew up in a small town, and I grew up all over the world.

Wedding shoes! Aren’t they perty?

This is going to sound cliche, but I feel extraordinarily blessed to be married to him. After my relationship with God, my relationship with Spiderbane is the most sure I have been about anything. I had no doubts about marriage with him whereas I had multiple doubts about the future of other relationships I had before him. I don’t know when either one of us will kick the bucket, but I hope it’s many years from now. I’m having too much fun and growing too much to want to say goodbye anytime soon.

*Honestly, this prompt reminds me of MySpace questionnaires, which makes me want to ignore it. (Anyone remember those?) At the same time, I think quite highly of my “current relationship” so there you have it!

**When you grow up in Africa, you have a very healthy respect and fear of spiders. You do not mess with those bad boys. Google African spiders if you’re not arachnophobic, and you’ll know what I mean.