The Conversation: The Night Our Journey Began

The Conversation: The Night Our Journey Began

Sometimes I think the most important moments in our lives don't announce themselves when they happen.

There is no music playing in the background. No one tells you, Remember this night. This is where your life changes.

Sometimes it is simply a Saturday night, a home-cooked dinner, two college students sitting across from each other, and a conversation that lasts until almost midnight.

That was us.

We had been dating for about four months in college. Four months doesn't sound like very long now, but at the time, I was completely smitten with him.

And I do mean smitten.

My first impressions of him were that he was quiet, serious, thoughtful and incredibly self-controlled. He wasn't the kind of guy who needed to be the center of attention. He didn't talk just to fill the silence. When he spoke, I tended to listen because I knew he had actually thought about what he was saying.

There was something about that that drew me in.

I also thought he was incredibly handsome, which certainly didn't hurt!

And I wanted him to kiss me.

Oh, how I wanted him to kiss me!

But apparently, he had other ideas.

During those first four months, the most physical affection I had received from him was a kiss on the forehead. Even a kiss like that made my knees weak at first, but definitely not the kind I was secretly hoping for.

I remember wanting more and wondering if he was ever going to make a move.

He did eventually explain his position. Sex wasn't going to happen until we were married.

At the time, I probably thought that was both frustrating and admirable. Looking back, I realize it told me something important about his character. He had boundaries, and he was willing to stick to them even when it would have been easier not to.

That was one of my first clues that this man was different.

Then came that Saturday night.

He invited me to a friend's house for dinner. We arrived, only to discover that his friend wasn't there.

Since we both lived in the dorms, we didn't exactly have a lot of privacy. So rather than simply heading back, he decided this was actually a good opportunity for the two of us to have some quiet time together.

And he cooked for me.

I can still smile thinking about that.

There were braised pork chops, homemade scalloped potatoes and a salad that I made.

As I watched him preparing dinner, I remember thinking something along the lines of, What can't this man do?

Here I was, already falling for him, and now he was cooking me a wonderful dinner.

I was in trouble.

The good kind of trouble.

We sat down to eat, and eventually the conversation turned toward the future.

That was when the evening became much more significant than I realized at the time.

He started asking me questions.

• What did I want out of marriage?

• What did I think a husband and wife should be like?

• What were my expectations?

• What did I think my responsibilities would be?

And then he began explaining his own vision.

• He told me that he wanted to be in charge of our marriage.

I'll admit that hearing those words gave me butterflies.

Not necessarily because I completely understood what he meant yet, but because I was sitting across the table from the man I was falling in love with and he was talking about the possibility of us having a future together.

He explained that being in charge didn't mean silencing me.

He wanted me to have a voice.

He wanted to hear my opinions. He wanted me to tell him when I disagreed. He wanted to know what I was thinking and feeling.

But he also believed that leadership meant accepting responsibility.

He envisioned himself as the one who would ultimately carry the responsibility for our family and our marriage.

And then something happened that still stands out to me after all these years.

The conversation became easy.

There was no awkwardness.

No script.

No list of rules sitting between us.

We just talked.

For hours.

We talked about what our marriage might look like. We talked about roles and responsibilities. We talked about expectations, accountability and even consequences.

And as strange as it might sound to someone looking at that conversation from the outside, I wasn't sitting there feeling frightened.

I was at peace.

I think part of that was because I was beginning to recognize something about myself, too.

I have always been someone who likes structure. I like knowing what is expected of me. I appreciate accountability. And even at that young age, there was something comforting to me about the idea of having a husband who would take responsibility for leading while I willingly supported him.

I wasn't looking for someone to control every part of my life.

I was looking for a man I could trust.

And I was beginning to believe that I had found him.

We talked until about 11:30 that night.

Think about that for a moment.

A couple who had only been dating four months sat at a dinner table and spent most of an evening talking about marriage, responsibilities, expectations and the kind of relationship we wanted to build.

We didn't know everything.

We were young.

We certainly didn't have the benefit of twenty-five years of hindsight.

But we knew enough to say, Yes. This is what we want.

That conversation was the beginning of our taken-in-hand dynamic.

But more importantly, it was the beginning of us learning how to communicate about something that mattered deeply to both of us.

When I look back now, nearly a quarter of a century later, I sometimes wish I could go back and sit at that dinner table for just a few minutes.

• I'd like to watch that young couple again.

• I'd watch him cooking dinner.

• I'd watch myself trying not to stare at him too much.

• I'd listen to the questions we asked each other.

• I'd listen to the hopes we had for our future.

And I'd probably smile at how little we understood about what the next twenty-five years would bring.

• We didn't know about the challenges we would face.

• We didn't know how much we would change.

• We didn't know how many times we would have to learn to communicate better, forgive each other, apologize and start again.

• We didn't know what marriage would really require of us.

But that night, sitting across from each other, we made an important decision.

We decided to build something together.

I thought I was simply having dinner with the man I was falling in love with.

I didn't realize I was sitting at the beginning of a journey that would last a lifetime.

And maybe that's what makes the memory so special to me.

It wasn't dramatic.

It wasn't complicated.

It was just us.

Two young people falling in love, talking honestly about the future, and discovering that the life we wanted to build together was surprisingly compatible.

I still think about that young woman sometimes.

I had butterflies in my stomach, a crush on a very handsome and very stubborn young man, and absolutely no idea what the future held.

But I knew one thing.

I trusted him.

And that was enough to begin.

How Did Your Journey Begin?

Now I'm curious about the rest of you.

How did you first get into a domestic discipline or taken-in-hand relationship?

Was it something you talked about before marriage? Did one of you introduce the idea unexpectedly? Did it develop slowly over the years?

I'd love to hear those stories.

Sometimes I think the beginning tells us a lot about the relationship itself.

BTW I wrote this for The Pink Side last week and I changed some things. If you want to read the original click the picture below. 

Let me know which article is better. This one or The Pink Side.