I Married My Glass of Wine

I am currently 22 years old. Many of the people near and dear to my heart, the ones I took shots with and yelled inappropriate chants with at house parties just a few years back, are in their late teens and early twenties, the peak of what they may soon refer to as the good ol’ days. A good majority of those friends from back home are currently headed out to a soon-to-be legendary party in rural Mercer County. A small part of me is envious – the part of me that used to run barefoot down county roads after midnight, jump over bonfires with a little too much liquid courage, and shotgun beers in my swimsuit.

And now here I sit on my apartment balcony, sporting my fitness capris, and a high ponytail, sipping on an Amber Woodchuck in between sentences and admiring the beautiful plants we’ve managed to keep alive. This simple life, the one seen by many my age as monotonous and boring, is exactly the life I wanted all along. I am what my grandmother refers to as an old soul. I enjoy quiet. I am comfortable in a routine. Nothing makes me happier than peaceful relationships and calm surroundings. For a long time, in an attempt to be viewed as interesting and adventurous by the guys in my life (because when you’re 17, that’s who matters after all), I tried denying my old soul. I tried playing up the wild child side of me, milking it for all it was worth, because the guys I knew never seemed to fall for the balanced, nurturing old soul type. 

But then I met the guy who proved me wrong. And then, after three plus years, plenty of disagreements and countless unforgettable memories, I married him. Three weeks ago, I promised forever to the most balanced, calming, and overall greatest influence in my life. I have never seen anybody look as handsome as Robert Trefethren did on that hot, windy June afternoon. The way his face lit up when we first looked into each other’s eyes, the smile that covered his face all day long, the way he walked with such purpose and spoke with such passion – he epitomized every reason I fell in love with him in the first place.

Our love story is far from average and even farther from perfect. We met at a college party. Since he was moving across the state just a few days later, we were both certain it was going to be a weeklong fling, from which we could take away a few wonderful memories and maybe even a decent friendship. Neither of us expected that we would want to spend every waking moment together that week or that he would inevitably choose to stay in Fargo. He knew, commitment-phobe that I was at the time, that admitting I was the reason he stayed would have freaked me the hell out so he waited months before finally coming clean. Good choice. In hindsight: very cute.

Robby’s dad told me last weekend that he has never known two people more compatible than Robby and I. Hearing a man, usually so reserved and soft-spoken, give such a heartfelt approval of me and affirmation of our relationship meant more to me than he will ever know. And it got me thinking – is that true? Are Robby and I very obviously compatible, the kind of “match made in Heaven” that you read about in fairytales, or do we just work really hard to make it work? I have concluded that it is a little bit of both.

There’s a Blake Shelton song with a line, “You be my glass of wine, I’ll be your shot of whisky.” It is clear that the woman in the song is meant to be the classier, more delicate glass of wine, while the man is meant to be the rowdier, more rebellious shot of whisky. The line makes me smile every time because it is very clear that, in our marriage, the roles are reversed. Robby is the glass of wine; I’m the shot of whisky. That young girl at those parties, the reckless, fun loving, wild child, is still very much a part of me. The songs, the smells, the way that a cold Bud Light tastes on a hot summer day – those parties and memories shaped the very core of who I am. The late nights spent running from things I couldn’t explain and discovering parts of myself I hadn’t known existed until I went far enough to find them, those were moments that defined me more than I may have wanted to admit at the time.

Robby, on the other hand, has always been, at least for the time I’ve known him, so driven and focused. Word on the street is that before we met, the now professional, hard working political whiz kid wasn’t always so responsible, but I just can’t believe it. He never was much of a drinker or partyer. He has never tried a drug in his life. He has no tolerance for bullshit. That guy, my dear husband, is exactly what people mean when they say, “That guy has a good head on his shoulders.”

He’s my glass of wine; I’m his shot of whisky. He’s my right brain; I’m his left brain. He’s my confidence boost; I’m his support system. My father-in-law was probably right, we are pretty darn compatible, but it has also taken a great deal of work.  There have been so many times in our relationship when, for lack of a better phrase, shit got complicated. One of us was more committed than the other, one of us wasn’t as certain as the other, or one of us wasn’t paying as much attention as the other. There are so many reasons why we could have given up. But the key is that we never did. At the end of the day, no matter what our disagreements escalated into, we always came to the same conclusion – life is better together.

This so-called boring life, a life of Netflix dates and snuggling in our pajamas, a life of asking each other’s “highs” and “lows” of the day, a life of routine goodbye hugs and goodnight kisses, this life right here is the kind I love. So cheers to the drunken nights that got me to this very moment and cheers to the beautiful life I’m building with my husband. Even if I were given the chance to go back, I would never change a thing.