“Let’s get outside,” I told her.

It’s spring 2013 and I’m sweating.

The tiny bit of hair I still had at the time is doing nothing to hide the beads forming on my head.

My heart is beating hard enough that I’m convinced she can hear it.

We hit up a state park. I’d scouted the location the week prior, even though the location mattered far less than the courage I’d need to pull it off.

A grassy plain with water on either side of it. A natural bridge of sorts.

It takes a few minutes to get down to it. Sun out. Slight breeze.

And she tucks her arm into mine to steady herself.

Fuck.

Did she feel it?

She isn’t behaving differently.

How do I check it’s still in my pocket without her noticing?

A few more steps. We get to the spot.

Now or never.

“You sure you want to be part of my crazy family?” I ask.

She has no clue what’s coming.

“Yeah, of course,” she says, in a way that sounds a lot like, What are you talking about?

“Then I’d love to make it official,” I say, which is cringe as hell.

And I get down on one knee. No big speech. Right to it.

I ask the proper question.

Her turn to swear.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Then again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Then I’m pretty sure a third time.

“Is that a yes?”

Tear-filled nod.

Hugging. Kissing. Fairytale stuff.

It was for me, anyway.

Today, we’ve been married 12 years.

With a couple-month interlude, we’ve been together for 19.

Over half my life with my best buddy.

And here’s the part that makes the story a little weird.

From 7th grade on, I’d always been a girlfriend guy.

I’d never really had a version of myself that wasn’t attached to someone.

And after I’d been dating my wife for a few years, I had this mental reckoning:

What if she only feels like the one because you don’t know any better?

She had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t unhappy.

I was having a great time in a love I could not describe.

And still, at 20 years old, I told her I needed space.

I shut the whole thing down for a summer to “make sure.”

To this day, I don’t completely know why I did it.

The best explanation I have now is this:

I did not want the most important choice of my life to be something I made by default.

If this story had ended terribly, I obviously would not be sending you this email.

But it didn’t.

That summer, I worked at a resort. All the staff hung out together in their spare time.

One night, a girl I’d been flirting with made the move.

And mid-kiss, I knew.

No shade on this girl whatsoever.

But before our lips had even parted, the most visceral thought I may have ever had flashed through my mind:

She’s the one.

Not the girl I was kissing.

The girl I loved and had risked losing because some idiot part of me needed to find out whether I was choosing her or simply continuing with her.

I called her. Apologized for the grief. Told her I didn’t want to be with anyone else.

And somehow, she took me back.

The real version of happily ever after.

Twelve years of marriage.

Three kids.

A handful of moves.

Hard seasons and great ones.

A million inside jokes.

Regular life.

The kind of ordinary I would choose over and over and over again.

For a long time, I thought that summer was me trying to find out if she was the girl.

Hindsight taught me I already knew who she was.

I was trying to find out if I was the man capable of choosing her fully.

Someone messaged me recently asking for relationship advice.

Heavy stuff. Not nice.

And they asked:

“How do you know they’re the one?”

I don’t know how to answer that in a way you can put on a checklist.

For me, “know” is not the word.

It’s believe.

I believed she was the person I wanted beside me while I figured out every version of myself that came next.

I believed I could become the man who deserved the life we would build.

I believed the pull I felt toward her was worth trusting, even after I’d done something stupid enough to nearly lose it.

I didn’t know what twelve years of marriage would look like.

I didn’t know what having three kids would do to us.

I didn’t know where we’d live, what we’d build, what would hurt, what would change, or how much more I’d love her after all of it.

I didn’t know.

I believed.

And I behaved accordingly.

Happy anniversary to my best buddy.

-C