The Quiet Work: Marriage Talks

There is a kind of love that grows not in grand declarations, but in the small, ordinary moments where two people simply choose each other again, and again.

When I look at my life —Kami’s arms around me, our laughter, our unguarded love—I see not just a marriage of almost 30 years, but a friendship that has learned to breathe with time.

Passion is a beautiful spark, but it is not the glue. What holds a life together is the way he reaches for my hand before thought arises, the way my body knows him as home, the way we soften after a hard day and let love speak in gestures where words fall short—even when we miss the mark, even when we are learning again.

No one sees the quiet practice beneath these moments—the way marriage trains the whole chest to listen, the way friendship within marriage becomes a sanctuary where two names rest in one silence.

The world may see the kiss, but we know it is the honest conversation that calls us back when we drift. The world may notice the embrace, but only we know the storms we weathered, shoulder to shoulder, until the sun we share rose warm in both our ribs again.

Marriage, it turns out, is less about perfect harmony and more about returning—returning to kindness, returning to humor, returning to the friendship that made everything possible in the first place. It is a holy practice, a daily remembering: You are my safe place, and I am yours, and the ground beneath us is the same.

Maybe that’s what love really is—not a fairytale, not the rush of early infatuation, but the gentle miracle of two people who keep showing up as one life appearing as two. To laugh at each other’s silly faces. To kiss in public like teenagers. To hold each other a little tighter with every season. To forgive the stumbles. To allow the other to not know, to struggle, to be human—and to offer that same grace to the one awareness living here.

Perhaps the real miracle of marriage is not the years we’ve gathered, but the presence we’ve cultivated: two souls practicing, again and again, meeting in the middle where truth and tenderness are already waiting. In this shared life, God arrives as small things—the breath we share, coffee steam in morning light, quiet hands washing dishes as one rhythm.

After all the lessons and all the years, gratitude remains: grateful we found our way, grateful we stayed when leaving looked easier, grateful that after everything we can laugh, and hold each other like first time students of love—like children, innocence rising fresh in both. Here we are, still choosing us. Choosing friendship. Choosing the center we share.

I always remind him: I don’t know what the future holds. We are not perfect, and we will not pretend a fairytale or force a shape that honesty cannot inhabit. Love cannot live where we hide from ourselves or dim our own light.

But I do know this: while life is moving through us in this form, we will walk with honesty, with conversations that matter, with a willingness to grow side by side—joyfully, courageously—toward a healed and higher self that is not separate. Whatever that means, however it looks.

I will show up as a good friend first, then a spouse—two roles, one heart.

And may you feel a good friend in your corner today, which is to say: may you feel held by the same life that holds us all.

Light and love,

Anosha