The secret to a happy relationship

Today is my two-year anniversary with my fabulous amazing partner Ethan. I just got all teary reading his "happy anniversary to us" post on his blog, so I decided to post my own. There will be more thinky thoughts, but here's what's on my mind to begin with.

-Good relationships are no accident. Sometimes bad relationships are accidents. My bad relationships have often been ones that shouldn't have started or should've ended sooner, and there are a host of reasons people stay in bad (and/or abusive) relationships. But good relationships take work. We're a good match -- our personalities blend well but are pretty different, our politics are very similar, we're aware of the things we love about each other, we have similar levels of and theories on emotional responsibility, and we caught a spark at exactly the right time in each of our lives. We're also buoyed by family and friends who love us individually and together. It's lucky, and there are a lot of happy coincidences, but it's not on accident. We've gotten really good at processing and communicating.

-Neither of us grew up in a two-parent family. My mom has always worried that this will somehow be a detriment to my growing up and having a successful relationship, so she tried to get me to recognize other coupleships and how they work. Of course, that also meant hetero relationships, which E and I are not. I fall easily into housewifery in a way that doesn't work for me. (I get that it's something that works for some folks, and I'm sure parts of it work for me. But I fight with conditioning vs my personal beliefs and abilities, which makes me feel like drowning.) Anyway, two-parent families sounds like there would always be a superfluous parent. It's foreign to me, and I find that funny.

-I think it was almost a year ago when E and I visited our friend Zeek in Asheville. He had gotten out of a relationship a few months earlier and was in a new one that he was really excited about. He asked us what the secret to a happy relationship is. I believe I said "I'm smart enough to know how awesome he is" and E said "chocolate."

-I get anxious sometimes, and I need more reassurance than I'd like to. E deals with this well, knowing when he's not in an emotional place to be convincing me of what I already know. He said something the other day that I should get tattooed to my forehead: "I'm with you because of you, not because you beat out the competition -- which you do. I'm with you because I love you for you."

Damn I'm lucky. Happy anniversaweek to me and my hunny, who's more brilliant than the sun, sweeter than dates, cooler than a polar bear, and hotter than pure capsaicin.