The Longest Date: Life as a Wife Read Online Free Page B

guilty.”
    I told him he had no reason to feel guilty. But he said he couldn’t help it.
    Some things, I guess, we’re just born with.

The Vows I Read at Our Wedding
    A few years ago I was at a friend’s wedding and I remember thinking, during the vows, what an important test it was: To be able to say, out loud, in front of your closest friends and family, why you were choosing to spend your life with this particular person. Why you loved this person. Why, of all the people in the world,
this
person. It really struck me . . . how enormous an admission that was, how I hoped I would be able to do that someday, and how I needed to break up with the guy I had brought to that wedding.
    In the years that followed, that became my test of a relationship: could I answer those questions about whom I loved and why I loved him openly and honestly in front of all the people I cared about?
    And here we are. And I can. And there is so much to say. It is such a relief to have so much to say (and not just to my therapist):
    One thing I love about you, Ian, is that we have said most of these things to each other already. You never let a day go by when you don’t tell me how much you love me. And this is, of course, after warning me early on that you didn’t want to say “I love you” too often, because you felt it would lose its meaning. I love that you have no strength in your convictions when it comes to the limits of your love. You continue to surprise me, and yourself, I think, with your capacity to love and be loved.
    I love that I can count on you completely. You always do more than you say you will. In fact, when I recently had a little health scare (which turned out to be nothing), your response was, “Not on my watch. Nothing is going to happen to you on
my
watch.” And although you sometimes seem to have superpowers, I know you can’t stop bad things from happening to us or to the people around us. But the way you reacted and dropped everything to take care of me made me feel confident that we’ll be able to get through anything. You make me feel safe, and watched over, like nobody ever has before.
    In fact, there is only one promise you have not kept, and it was one you made when we first met. You said I shouldn’t date you, because you would break my heart. I believe my response was: “How do you know I won’t break
your
heart?” And the game was on. And we both failed miserably, as evidenced by this rather public waving of the white flag.
    I love how much you love your family and friends, and what a good friend you are, and what good friends you surround yourself with. I feel confident you would have realized on your own what a catch I was, but I still credit your friend Christina for punching you, fairly hard, after she met me, and telling you not to screw this up. And although you definitely have a mind of your own, I know that a veto from any one of a number of people here might have meant no party tonight. Well, you would have been at some party tonight, but not this party.
    And I have to thank my friends, too, for ignoring my plea not to let me fall in love with you after you warned me I shouldn’t. I remember when Liz and Elisa and Julie met you: they told me the next morning they liked us together, and they were off the case. Apparently nobody could stop this wedding from happening, not even our friends who could normally be counted on for anything.
    I love what a good neighbor you are. I never had a neighbor who brought me pumpkin soufflé or green apple sorbet. I can’t complain, though, because I have a boyfriend who does. A boyfriend who, even when I’m doing the lemonade fast, tells me I don’t need to, then tries to make even
not eating
fun by buying a Darth Vader bendy straw, and making lemonade popsicles with ice trays and toothpicks. Of course, this generosity comes with a price. Gone forever are the days when I could, like a good New Yorker, go into my house, or walk down the street, without