Over the course of the past year, I’ve been asked this question many times. It’s a common catching up question from curious friends. But it’s a little like “how’s life”; “how’s married life” is not an easy question to answer while catering to typical attention span. So my response is usually, “it’s really great”, “it’s pretty awesome”, something like that. It really doesn’t do any justice to what I want to say but I feel really lazy to go into speech-giving mode. So I suppose on my 1-year anniversary, it’s the appropriate juncture to really give a proper answer to this question.
I want to caveat that I’m just going to write as the thoughts come to my head because my work requires me to really structure and be precise about what I want to say when I write, so I’m also concurrently taking the chance to write the way I feel like writing here, just because I can. 
So let me articulate why married life is so great.
I think I’m really lucky because I married my best friend. Having been together for 13 years now, we are just so close and being married just makes everything more convenient. I get to send her home at the end of every date, and also happen to reach home AT THE SAME TIME. I get to sometimes go to work with her, and very often go home from work with her. I get to tell her we are going out on a date, and then end up staying home to laze in bed with minimal consequences, because she’s lazing in bed at home too. I think you are more or less getting the drift.
Seriousness aside, the perks are really endless for me. I married an introvert who needs time to recharge in her quiet little corner at times. And while in the past this would mean not meeting up, now it just means I get to watch her while she recharges or maybe even join her in her corner and keep her company.
I’m no good with details and so many other things that I don’t have enough strength to type them all out, but she’s so good with all these things life throws at us. I watch her in awe everyday, but I remember to watch out for what she might not be so good at too, so I can make myself useful in those areas and we can be a good team. But somehow, we are already more or less a good complement to begin with. Yes, I know how lucky I am.
I can’t sit still and enjoy the moment. I’m always fidgeting, mind wandering somewhere else, thinking about what’s next. She teaches me every single day what it’s like to live in the moment, how it’s like to have a list of things you really want to do so that time doesn’t slip you by. I’m still learning to cherish the present more, but I also get to enjoy myself watching her accomplish all these things she really wants to do and I get to also have a new life goal, to make sure I give her the best circumstances I can give so she will be able to accomplish them all.
This also means that I get to travel to places I never thought I would go, though I really want to go places. Now I just need to follow her and I get to go to places that are really awesome.
I get to have someone almost 24-7 for me to disturb and irritate just for self entertainment. And it is constantly entertaining.
I get someone to keep me grounded with her reality checks. Someone who isn’t afraid to call me out on my information gaps when I argue and am overly eager to win, or when I just don’t like to be told that I don’t know what I don’t know, or I just don’t realise it at all.
I think the best part about marriage is that I get to love without worry. There’s a certainty in terms of reciprocity that of course comes with the “right” person. It sounds cliche but I don’t really know how else to articulate this. Relationships are built on trust and they never really ever stop building. Because trust is cumulative, it just gets stronger and stronger.
So being married means that I get to have all of the above, and somehow or rather, I always get to be loved back too. I’ll have someone to talk to and confide in when I feel weary or frustrated, when things aren’t really going my way. Someone who really cares for me in so many ways, cares for how I am, cares for who I am, who I want to be, what I want to do, what I believe in. Someone who knows my life so well, knows what I mean when I say what I say, knows what I need when she looks at me or hear my thoughts.
So yup, married life is really great. It’s pretty awesome.
