Love, for me, isn’t fireworks or grand gestures.

It’s companionship. Friendship. Someone to talk to at the end of the day. Someone who backs you up with the kids and with the world. It’s knowing that if I’m too tired or too sick to advocate for myself, she will. And knowing I will do the same for her.

It’s spending evenings together after the kids are asleep. Sleeping next to the same person every night. Building a life that feels steady, even when everything else isn’t.

For a long time, I thought love was supposed to look one very specific way. A marriage between a man and a woman. Romance as proof. Intensity as evidence. I grew up believing that if love was real, it would be obvious, dramatic, and externally recognizable.

That was the script I was handed, and for a long time, I tried to understand myself inside it.

Thy is the first woman I ever openly dated. And loving her quietly rewrote everything I thought I knew about what love had to be.

What feels safest in our relationship isn’t passion or performance. It’s the fact that we love each other for keeps. We tell each other the truth. We stick around. Not because we’re trapped, but because this is what we want. This is the family we built together.

When one of us is overwhelmed or dysregulated, love looks like space. Not distance, but room. Being close without being in each other’s face. Often occupying the same room, doing different things. Together, but not demanding anything from each other in that moment.

That matters more than people realize.

Commitment, for me, isn’t about intensity. It’s about staying. Working through conflict instead of abandoning ship. Choosing repair over escalation. Deciding, again and again, that we’re on the same side.

I don’t actually think love is a feeling. Feelings come and go. Love is a commitment. Love is thinking of the other person first. It’s considering their needs at least as much as your own. It’s choosing care even when things are quiet, boring, or hard.

From the outside, our relationship probably doesn’t look very romantic. We aren’t overly physically affectionate. And when Thy is especially sweet or expressive, it sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. Not because I don’t love her, but because anything that feels showy doesn’t land naturally for me.

That doesn’t mean the love is shallow.

It means it’s deep.

We’ve worked through a lot together. Fixed things. Learned each other. Built a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to be proven. That depth matters more to me than sparks ever could.

I’m writing this for the people who think their version of love is weird. For the ones who aren’t romantic or sentimental. For anyone who worries that because their love doesn’t look like the movies, it must be lacking.

I am the least romantic person ever. And I show up. I stay. I advocate. I build. I care deeply for the person I love.

Love how you love.

Love who you love.

Just keep choosing to show up and build together.