Hooked on a feeling

I met Doug back in high school. Back when he was a football player and I was a band geek. Back when teenagers are too stupid to realize that just because he's a football player and she's a band geek doesn't mean that they can't be friends. That was the social nature of our high school though, so even though we had calculus class together, we only ever said hi to each other, every day for an entire school year. It was not love at first sight.


Even when we started spending time together, the summer after we graduated, it wasn't love at first sight (not for me, I mean). He was nice to me and he carried on conversations with my parents, and we had fun together. But I was going to New York for college and he was staying in Maine, so of course nothing was going to happen between us.


Well, time went on during my freshman year of college and I had a couple of boyfriends, but Doug and I chatted on the phone (that was before email and all that jazz, can you believe it?). I distinctly remember the moment I knew that I felt something for him, even if it was unnamed at the time. He called me to tell me he had been in a car accident. He was fine, but I remember asking him if I should come home. Things changed for us then; we spent all the time I was in Maine together. That summer, between freshman and sophomore year of college, we became an "item". We've really never looked back.

We didn't have an easy romance. We spent 7 years apart, seeing each other only on school vacations, the random long weekend, or weekends once I moved to Boston for law school. Oh, I could have attended UMaine Law, but who knows how our story would have ended. When we finally married, everyone commented on how relaxed we seemed at our wedding. For us, it was a "well it's about time we got married" feeling at our wedding.

This year we'll celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, and our 17th anniversary of being an "item". We were just talking last night about how we're almost to the point of having spent half our lives together. It's that feeling from way back when that we have that keeps us together I think. We're comfortable, but not so comfortable that we don't make an effort to work on our marriage. We're each other's best friend. I can't imagine not having him in my life. He knows when to make me laugh, when to give me a hug and when to shut up and listen (even if he doesn't always hear me, he IS listening). Love you baby.