Nine Years

Every year the Edge Foundation poses a question to an array of elite scientists and leading intellectuals, then publishes their answers. Reading through The Best American Nonrequired Reading for 2006, I came across the answers to the 2005 question: "What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?" The answers were all engaging and stimulating, but the one that struck me the most came from David Buss, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Buss's reply? True love.

I've spent two decades of my professional life studying human mating. In that time, I've documented phenomena ranging from what men and women desire in a mate to the most diabolical forms of sexual treachery. I've discovered the astonishingly creative ways in which men and women deceive and manipulate each other. I've studied mate poachers, obsessed stalkers, sexual predators, and spouse murderers. But throughout this exploration of the dark dimensions of human mating, I've remained unwavering in my belief in true love.

While love is common, true love is rare, and I believe that few people are fortunate enough to experience it. The roads of regular love are well traveled and their markers are well understood by many—the mesmerizing attraction, the ideational obsession, the sexual afterglow, profound self-sacrifice, and the desire to combine DNA. But true love takes its own course through uncharted territory. It knows no fences, has no barriers or boundaries. It's difficult to define, eludes modern measurement, and seems scientifically wooly. But I know true love exists. I just can't prove it.

I know that true love exists because I am lucky enough to have it. Whatever difficulties (fairly minor) that my Old Man and I have, and whatever ways (small and relatively trivial) I might wish he were different or he might wish I were, we have a deep, abiding, growing, and life-affirming love. There's no one I'd rather be with, no one whose opinion of me matters more, no one I enjoy talking to more, no one I feel more comfortable with, more "got" by. After all our years as a couple (thirteen and counting), I like him so completely, enjoy hanging out with him so much, feel such affection for him, crave to touch and be touched by him. And beyond all of these descriptions, beyond anything I can say to express my feelings for him, my love for my Old Man simply is, deep and pure hearted, vital and unquestionable. I see him from a distance and my heart still makes a little leap. I sometimes still smile involuntarily at the unexpected sound of his voice.

We got married nine years ago today, and I love him more and more. From being friends to becoming boyfriend/girlfriend, from being married to sharing the joyful and exasperating experience of being parents, this thing we have together has gotten cooler and cooler.



Happy anniversary, my dear.