A Tribute to the Unsexy Marriage

You’ve seen the movie: the successful, charmingly goofy guy chases the cute, quirky, insanely successful girl and overcomes some superficial issue to create a grand romantic gesture that brings quirky girl to tears and they live happily ever after. Or something like that.

But in real life most male goofiness is just embarrassing and not at all charming or endearing. And most of us aren’t hip journalists or trendy bakers. We are plain jane accountants, joe plumbers, supply managers in warehouses for mid-tier cleaning supplies distributors. Our life reflects “The Office” better than these movies.

So when we, the ordinary people, meet each other and fall in love, it can look very… well… ordinary. Dinner dates, pizza and tv, meeting their ordinary family and friends, maybe even some nice walks.

And then it becomes a long term thing, and after deciding whose Ikea furniture is in better condition, you build an ordinary life together. The first time you or your partner passes gas in the bedroom is embarrassing but then it just becomes another fact of life. Lovemaking is great, but it never happens on top of wild animal skins in front of blazing fires. Maybe the grandest gesture you can hope for is a clean kitchen without asking.

And one ordinary night, you turn on Netflix and scroll through the Romantic Comedies, and you can’t help but notice that your life doesn’t look at all like that.

And that’s just fine.

This is an article celebrating the unsexy marriage. The plain partnership. The ordinary couple. Because that’s what most of us are, and it’s great. Our love isn’t formed and made solid in the Jumbo-tron proposal – it’s in the partner who cleans up your snotty tissues without complaining when you’re sick. We might feel excited by a bouquet of roses, but when they remember to pick up that thing we needed that we forgot, we go head over heels. Five star hotels and restaurants may be out of our reach, but your partner can make you feel like royalty just by giving you a simple breakfast in bed. You don’t need the world to look at you with adoration, you just need that one person who will always adore you, just the way you are.