I want it to always be a choice for both of us. Maybe we didn’t choose to fall in love with each other, maybe it just happened because we’re very lucky. But I want us to choose every day to stay in love, especially when it’s not easy to love each other. I want to love you when you’re irritating me beyond belief and when you’re leaving a mess everywhere you go. And I want you to love me when I’m frustrating you with my lack of patience and when I’m always forgetting to do that one thing you asked me to do.

I want it to be simple. Not because being in a relationship with you will be simple, but because my mindset will be simple. Every decision, as hard as it may be to follow through on, will come with a yes or no answer. “Does it help us? Will it help you and I, together? Yes or no?” I want every decision we make to be made together. And when I have to make a difficult choice, I want to be at peace with the fact that it’s better for both of us in the long run, instead of worrying about what’s easier for me short-term.

I want to always be me without you, and I want you to always be you without me. But I want us both to feel like no matter how secure we are as individuals, no matter how well we know ourselves, we’re always happier being us than we are being you and I. We’re stronger being us, we’re more joyful being us, we want one life made up of two parts.

I want to feel pain when you feel pain. Not because it feels good, but because it’s a reminder that my heart and my soul live outside my body and a reminder of what a strange, mysterious force love can be. I want to feel pain when you feel pain because it’s a reminder that there’s a person out there who I care about a thousand times more than I care about myself. A person who reminds me not to live inside of my own head and inside of my own world, because there’s something so much greater in front of me, if I would just open my eyes and remember that I’m just a spec in this universe.

I want to be a presence in front of you. I want to be able to sit across the table and look at you and make you feel better after a long, bad day, without you even needing to say anything. I want you to be able to look at me and feel like there is someone in the world who cares about you and understands you and hears you, even if you don’t communicate your feelings through words. I just want to be able to nod my head, to say I know without saying it.

I want to always be surprised by you, no matter how well I know you. I want you to sometimes feel like a stranger to me, because there’s always still so many things I have yet to learn about you. Or maybe they are things that I once knew but that are different now, because you never stop changing and you make me want to never stop changing.

I want to always like you, in addition to loving you. I want to irresistibly smile when I see you, to laugh when you’re not even trying to be funny, to feel better watching tv next to you because your presence calms me even if we’re not saying anything to each other. I want to love you and like you because the decision is always so simple: yes or no?