I’m so grateful to wake up beside her every day, to feel her body folded around mine, fitting into all the right places. I can’t imagine how I got so lucky to have seen this face every day for over 16 years. There were many nights apart when we were both in training and did overnight shifts. Daytimes would be all messed up. We’d be all messed up. There were a few weeks here and there when we were geographically separated but still, we’d talk. Or FaceTime, these days. Back when we first met, I had a Razr flip phone.
These eight weeks might be one of the longest stretches in the last ten years where we’ve been together night and day, day and night. There were times when she went to the clinic and I went to the hospital and three nights when I was deployed to an emergency room, but we were still together during the day. Let me say this: we like each other more. We appreciate each other more. Whereas I’ve spent all this time worrying that we’d get sick of each other if we actually spent all our time together, I’m pleased to announce that this is entirely not the case.
We cook together now. I love to cook, but sometimes get tired of the expectation that I need to have dinner on the table, so I said so to her one night, about a month ago. Now she comes to help me put together a sauce, or makes a salad out of vegetables that I chop. We used to get annoyed when we bumped into each other in our narrow galley kitchen. We still get annoyed, but these days, it’s a tiny flame that flares for a second and is quickly tamped down. Not that blazing fire that would last for hours for no reason, burning everything in its path.
We discuss a lot more, though it seems like we have our own quiet time a lot more.
We have gotten into the habit of quickly identifying our feelings and calling each other out on their bullshit, and let that be the end of that, instead of letting things stew for days, weeks, years. We will try to talk it out reasonably, instead of shutting down or running away. This works, these days, because we know there’s a receptive partner on the other side, someone who loves us and wants us to be our best selves. There’s no reason not to be truthful.
We were watching The Challenge (a guilty pleasure). Later, in bed, I asked her if she thought I was manipulative, like crazy manipulative. I didn’t think so but I worry about these things because I don’t think that manipulative people can see themselves clearly. She thought for a moment too long so that I feared her reply. But it was simply thoughtful:
“I think we both manipulate each other in small ways.”
And it was true. In human relationships, what we aim to get to is a steady state of compromise through lessons of push and pull, give and take, so that you don’t feel like you’re giving yourself away for someone, at least not unwillingly.
I said, “That’s so true.”
We weren’t being malicious about our manipulation.
We also have a lot more quiet time. We used to fill every moment feeling the need to talk or acknowledge each other’s presence but now we spend a lot of time sitting on our computers and our phones. We do put away the screens when we need to, but we both have a lot of work to do and a lot of reading to get through. Instead of seeking constant reassurances, we sit on the couch and leave each other alone. Again, the only way this works is because we know the other person will still be there when we get back. We aren’t intentionally ignoring each other: we just both need to do our work to be our better selves, and we respect that.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be trying to date during the pandemic, or even be in a new relationship where you haven’t farted in front of each other. I know our first six to eighteen months were pretty rocky, when we were trying to figure out our boundaries. Also, we were young. My heart goes out to the women and men who are at home in abusive relationships. I don’t know how much help it is to tell you that there is help if you live in New York City:
We grocery shop together (which she hates) and do laundry together (which I hate). We take turns cleaning up the cat puke and picking a TV show to watch. Every morning we go out to the balcony and check on our seedlings. We even started doing puzzles together (now we sound really old — we’re in our late 30’s!). Maybe someday I’ll write the story of how we met. For now, suffice to say that the pandemic made our story stronger by making us live together longer; that is one good thing that came out of this.
. . .
Carmen Fong is a writer, artist, and colorectal surgeon who lives in New York City with her partner and two cats. She was a Stony Brook Children’s Literature Fellow and writes young adult novels. She also blogs about healthcare and surgery. Her poetry has been published in The Apothecary and on Medium.
For more content, visit my Medium profile; or my LinkTree for scholarly work, or Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Flying Penguins, which is a digest of my best work every month as well as completely new pieces written just for the newsletter, delivered directly to your Inbox!
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Unsplash