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Shirlé Hale's avatar

This year my husband and I will celebrate 30 years together. I pause writing this.

30 years.

We have been together longer than the time we didn’t know one another. We have done practically everything together since 1993. We came together through our band’s playing a Pro Choice concert in Baltimore, David standing with the “grunge dudes” in his band, them eyeing us Riot Grrrls up, and stating that he liked me the best as my band Womyn of Destruction played headliner at the 8x10 Club.

Three months later we are a couple. 2 years later we start a band. 28 years later we never stopped playing and touring together.

We opened a business up together creating a Record Store Cafe, the three things we love the most. Food, Coffee and Music.

We finish each others sentences at this point. We jokingly like to yell, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD” when I say that I want Sushi for dinner right before he was about to say the same thing.

We are also very role reversed in our duties in our marriage. He likes doing dishes and the laundry, which I hate doing laundry. He can’t use a power tool to save his life, but I love problem solving and fixing things with my hands around the house or the shop. He’s absolutely amazing at attending to our finances (which I absolutely am NOT and silently worry about a future (universe forbid!) without him). I love grocery shopping and cooking. He detests the super market.

He loves holding hands and snuggling. I sometimes forget that these things are important to him. Me, the dude.

So I write him random love notes on his salad dressing containers. He randomly asks me, while doing the bills, “ Did you know you are cool, Tiny?” To which I always reply, “Nope.”

These little things we say and do are the daily little valentines we have given one another for 30 years.

Here’s to 30 more.

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Carole Duff's avatar

New romance in your fifties is a little different from twenty or thirty years previous. For us, there were no illusions about what we were going to be when we grew up, because we were grown up. Yes, dinners, flowers, and wine, but we talked about our successes and failures, families, values, finances, and health. Yes, he gave me a diamond ring, which left me speechless, and kisses... "It's in His Kiss - that's where it is!" But what made me say yes? He cooked meals with me; one weekend he helped me put up a bookcase in my basement; he gave me a power washer for Mother's Day, so I could clean the green slim off the north side of my house and terrace. Just what I'd asked for. He listened, pitched in, and gave me "Atta girls!" Now that's romantic!

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