My boyfriend and I were reading in bed the other night when I turned to ask him, “What’s your love language, again?” Marcos looked up at me from his phone, “My love language?” He considered, “I think it’s quiet.”
I looked at him and said, “Quiet?”
“There’s too much talking sometimes. I like quiet.”
“Wait.” I said, “Do you think I talk too much?”
He raised his eyebrows, turned off his phone and said, “Come on, baby. It’s time for bed. Let’s settle in.”
“Honey!” I think I yelled, “Quiet is not a love language!”
He yawned, “I think it’s mine.”
I wasn’t sure if I should feel insulted, but then he kissed me deeply and I remembered that affection is his love language. His real one. The one that we can read about and google and look up on a chart. But quiet?
As he pulled up the covers and drifted off to sleep, I sat there wide awake contemplating my favorite subject: the two of us. How is it that this man, this love of mine, this beast as I affectionately call him, could be my partner for the past nine years? Nine years. NINE! But if quiet is his love language, and I need to talk about the same thing 100 times until I’m certain I’ve examined every possible angle, then how in the world are we meant to make it as a couple?
When I think of the last nine years, Marcos isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. My daughter is. She achieved all of the milestones one does between the ages of 14 and 23 so there are a lot of memories there. I also think of writing my memoir about young widowhood. Marcos is a big part of that story, too, and if you’ve read Widowish, you already know a thing or two about us. But… nine years?! Nine years is almost a decade which is how long my husband has been gone. Joel died unexpectedly and Marcos has been in the picture since shortly after I became a widow. I’ve written about my loss, my husband, and my boyfriend extensively. I believe it’s to try to make sense of it all because when Joel died, my life became surreal. I think I’m still recovering. I’ve found that grief gets easier to manage, but it’s a constant presence, even when life is good. Which it is!
“I’ve never met anyone who thinks about her relationship as much as you do. It’s like you scrutinize it. Why?” Asked one of my best friends recently. “Marcos is a great guy. He loves you. You’re a good couple. What gives?”
“I don’t know!” I practically whined, “I can’t help it!”
The thing is, I love Marcos. I love him! And we’re very different:
-As a musician and performer, he’s more animated. As a writer, I’m more cerebral.
-He had many relationships during his troubadour youth. By the time I was in my early thirties, I was married, had a baby, and lived in a house with a white picket fence.
-He loves old movies and can talk about World War II as if he was there. I’ve always been into pop culture and find myself explaining things to him like FOMO and what’s trending on social media.
Maybe it’s true that opposites attract and, in our case, perhaps our mutual attraction to each other helps to smooth out our differences.
Sometimes, I consider Marcos’ point of view and think it must be weird to be in love with someone who would otherwise still be married. It’s got to feel unsettling in a way. Or even bring up feelings of jealousy. But Marcos simply accepts things as they are. I’m the one who ruminates about all of this and often. Sometimes out of nowhere, in a moment of ahem, quiet, he’ll just say to me, “Are you sitting there thinking with that big, beautiful brain of yours again, sweetheart?” He knows that words of affirmation is my love language (of course, words) and that I need to discuss a lot of the noise that’s inside my head just to get it out.
Perhaps in another nine years, I won’t feel as angsty. Maybe I will feel more at peace and any feelings of guilt (although slight) about finding love again so soon after Joel died will have dissipated. It’s possible that Marcos and I will be grandparents together one day. That would be something! Perhaps we’ll even be living together by then. For now, we’re both content living on different corners of the same street. These are the things we discuss without much fanfare, how our lives might change and grow because we are a couple. Even if one of us thinks out loud too much, and the other is content to bask in the quiet of our love. It’s a language barrier I think we’ll overcome.
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Melissa Gould is the author of Widowish, A Memoir, an Amazon Best Seller & Editor’s Pick, and a Goodreads Top Book of 2021. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Hollywood Reporter, Buzzfeed and more. Info about her editorial services, writing workshops, and more can be found at www.widowish.com.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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