The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie

Falling in love is so much fun.

Infatuation, lust, insecurity, and being so high you forget your ATM pin.

Now that I’m married, falling in love is inconvenient at best, a mortal sin at worst. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Most of the time, it happens with my husband, Odie. I fell for him because he has fifty different distinct qualities and habits that make my heart drop into my shoes.

For example, when he genuinely laughs at something, it’s like joy on tap.

The first time I made him laugh was in the copy room at the school where we both worked. Two coworkers discussed “The Vagina Monologues,” and asked me if I’d seen it.

“Seen it? It’s all I ever hear. ‘When did we decide thongs were a good idea? Was it never? Because I remember it being never. Also, what the fuck ever happened to Jeff?'”

I’m not sure Odie and I had been introduced at that point, but he actually doubled over and laughed.

I met him when he was 28, and he already had a little bit of salt and pepper gray in his Peter Krause-Six-Feet-Under-style sideburns. I don’t know why a little gray is so sexy on a youngish man, but it melted me.

He has straight, very white teeth, full, sexy lips, sculpted cheekbones, and perfect eyebrows. He passed all of these features on to our oldest daughter.

(Our youngest takes after my sister who looks like a cross between Charlize Theron and Emmanuelle Beart, so she’s set)

The first time he kissed me, after a ride home from a work-related party. I pulled my Jeep over in front of his place and kept the engine running.

“Get out of the car,” he told me.

“What? Why?”

“Because I have to kiss you.” His tone was, “I have to go, my kitchen’s on fire.” Not romantic and seductive, but like it was the most imperative thing he’d ever had to do. He left me in a smoking little puddle on the pavement.

He’s the only person in my life who makes me feel small in a good way. He’s eight inches taller than me, and solidly built. I can wear 4-inch heels and he still towers over me. I am above average height, and let’s just say I am beyond thrilled that big asses are all the rage, because I’m all about tha bass.

He has long, lanky arms and legs, which I find sexier than any other body type.

He’s a genius at math and physics. When our daughter asked him why we could see through the window but also still see our reflections in it, he explained light refraction to her as effortlessly as if she’d asked the time.

I don’t constantly worry that I’ll lose his love. Last week, we had an overdue, screaming, cathartic fight. He left.

He left, but I know he won’t “leave.” He went out of the house to cool off and to think. To get away from me so as not to choke me (another thing I love about him: he’ll only choke me if I beg and first agree on a safe word). I wanted him gone. I was glad he was gone. I needed the space too. His love isn’t a scary, delicate, breakable thing.

He knows what a selfish, lazy, insecure, wounded little child I am inside, and he never uses it against me.

He looks fucking hot in his suit on Back to School Night.

And in his boxer briefs on Saturday morning.

And naked, tangled up in sweaty sheets.

I fall in love with him all the time, and it’s fun. I enjoy the romantic, erotic rollercoaster of it. Monogamy has always been a struggle for me. Until Odie, I’d cheated on every person I’d every dated, if I dated them long enough. Mostly the “cheating” was in the form of desperately wanting someone else and having deceitful emotional connections with those other people, but I confess that several times the cheating was literal, physical, and hot as hell. I was addicted to the high.

It still happens to me. I still feel the pull of “The Other.” I’m currently researching and taking notes on a post I’m writing about Polyamory and another on bisexuality where I’ll go deeper into these feelings and how they fit into my life. If you want to get caught up with where my head is at, I highly recommend Esther Perel’s TED talks, and her book Mating in Captivity. A real game-changer for the self-authored fan fiction in my head.

Finally, I love Odie because he agreed with my assertion that Valentine’s Day is pointless and stupid, so we got married and turned it into our anniversary instead.