I live in the house my husband lived in while we were dating. He and his brother bought it as an investment and planned to flip it. That was in 2003. Six months before I met him.
When we got married, we bought his brother out and are raising our kids in the same house where our romance first bloomed.
Back then, there were three guys living in the house. The two brothers and their friend. The den had these old green couches from his brother’s college days, and I have memories of us curled up on the couch watching t.v. over a decade ago.
I remember the early days, when I first would come over, we’d sit close and our legs would brush and I’d feel this surge of electricity through my whole body. Sigh. I was madly in love with him.
I remember holding hands. I remember him putting his arm around me as I leaned into his chest and breathed in the sensation of new love and romantic chemistry.
I still think he’s the sexiest man alive.
I still can get caught completely off guard by a kiss. It takes my breath away.
But we don’t do it as much anymore.
The electric currents are rarer because we’re getting dinner on the table and updating our schedules and splitting up the reading homework at night and going to bed completely fried from too little sleep and too much still to do.
This week, I was sitting in the big leather chair when he came in to sit on the couch (a different one now) and watch a little news. I heard a little voice inside my head saying, you should get up and sit on the couch with him.
See, in the old days, there wasn’t even a stand alone chair in the room. Just couches (smart single boys). We wouldn’t have even used a chair if there’d been one though because we wanted to be as physically proximate as we could.
But now, we almost never sit next to each other because one of us is in the chair and one of us is in the couch. Or we have a lapfull of kids. Or we’re at the kitchen table and the kids fight over who gets to sit next to mommy and daddy.
So up I got and sat as close as I possibly could get without landing on his lap. I grabbed his arm and threw it around my shoulder and snuggled into his chest. After watching the weather, he started flipping channels and landed at the beginning of Rocky III. I am a HUGE fan of Rocky movies, and he couldn’t help but be amused by the 1980s hilarity of Rocky against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. We laughed and leaned in and replicated a scene that looked a lot like one from 2004.
Then I attacked him because getting all up in one another’s physical space will do that to you.
Married friends: we have to be more intentional about the romance.
Everyday romance.
There were no flowers or candlelight or fancy clothes or champagne on this night, but this was romance nonetheless. I was in an old t-shirt and ponytail, but I felt like the younger version of myself all gussied up and wanting so much for this boy to fall in love with me like I’d fallen in love with him. I still swoon with slow kisses. I still feel electricity when I’m pressed up against him. It is all still there. We’ve just got to dust it off.
More time on the couch. Less time in the chair.
More time flirting. Less time scheduling.
More time kissing. Less time sleeping. (It’s worth the trade.)
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