When You Are Meant to Watch Porn Together

Marriage is hard work. It's gruelling sometimes, and like many aspects of this ever-changing life, there are days when it seems to take more work. After ten years of married life, my husband and I seem to go through stages.

Sometimes we are good. Like, really good. Our love language flows easily, we laugh and cry together, staying up late conversing about the sort of things that only best friends can talk about. 

However, in the next phase, it seems that every tiny hiccup in life will cause a blowout fight that lasts days if not worked on and toiled over. Often, things like financial stress or issues with parenting crop up, which put an extra strain on our relationship. We tackle these issues with communication and brainstorming - just like all of the relationship experts say.

But what I find works best when we enter into one of these challenging stages is to bring to mind the best memory I have in our marriage. I think about this one moment, and wonder how things can ever be that bad because, really, the memory changes everything.

I've briefly written about this instance before, but with pandemic stress, things are coming to a head in my marriage, and I feel the need to write it out and get the story properly onto paper. Or screen, I guess.

We were 4 years into our marriage. Our lives seemed as though they were merging appropriately with two small children and a life brimming with possibility. Jamie, my husband, was going to culinary school and had just been promoted to a sous chef position at work. I was embarking on my writing career and was offered a column about family life in our town's local newspaper. We were living through one of the good phases of marriage - and it was lovely.

A few nights before, Jamie had gently awoken me from sleep, wrapped me in a furlined blanket and brought me out to our deck to view a meteor shower. I didn't know he was going to do this, and instead of losing my shit because he had woken me from a deep sleep, I cuddled close into his chest and enjoyed the moment.

At the time, it seemed like something out of my movie .  So romantic, so sweet of him to think of me and want to enjoy this one on one time together.

However, that's not the best memory I have of our marriage.

Although it was sweet, and I dearly loved sharing that experience with him, it was a few nights later that would stick out much more in the years to come.

Again, I woke to Jamie nudging me in the middle of the night. Except for this night, his face wasn't the picture of serenity like it had been when arousing me to watch the falling midnight sky. Oh no, tonight he seemed frantic. His eyes shone with an anticipation that was hard to place in my sleep-deprived state.

"What? What's going on?" I groggily asked as he whispered manically that I had to get up to see something.

There was no wrapping of a blanket over my shoulders. No cup of cocoa to keep me warm as I stepped out of the cotton sheet and onto cold laminate flooring. Instead, he led me quickly to the kitchen and told me to look out the window.

There, across the alleyway, our neighbours, who we had not met because we are deeply antisocial people, were having very engaged sex while smooshed up against their floor-length living room window.

Any normal human would have said something like, "Did you seriously just wake me up to watch people fucking?"

Like my husband, I am not normal, however. I watched those strangers go at it with a sort of fixation that probably bordered on creepy. No, on second thought, it most certainly bordered on creepy. Yet there we were, awed by the spectacle. Now and then, verbally wowing at the dexterity and vigour that these seemingly acrobatic sex professionals went about their task.

After about ten minutes of our live porn show, my husband turned to me and said, "I'm pretty sure that this is even better than the meteor shower."

I only nodded, still wowed by our great luck to have caught such a view.

I think about that couple often. Are they still together? Or was it a frisky one night stand that unbeknownst to them provided marriage fodder for the back alley neighbours for years to come? I wonder if they know that I rummage this memory up when things are at the very worst in my relationship to give myself a laugh and remember why it is that I love my husband so much.

Because despite how challenging the life and times of an old married couple can get, I know one thing for certain. And that is, Jamie and I are meant to be together. Or at least, we're meant to watch porn together.