Friendship adds strength to marriage.

Feb 13, 2011 9 Comments CATEGORIES: Featured

I can’t remember the first time I met my husband.

I know that it was at McMillan Junior High. That he was 11 and I was 12.

He was probably wearing turquoise high tops and Leggoons — do you remember Leggoons? I was in my thrift-shop menswear phase, and my bangs were too short because I’d decided to try to cut the curl out of them myself.

Kai and I didn’t start dating until our 20s, but our relationship, and our memories, go way, way back.

And I hate to say this — because if you didn’t already meet your true love in middle school, it’s probably too late — but it’s one of the best things about our marriage.

It’s part of what makes us feel like magic, even after 15 years together.

“You understand,” I remember warning him, “that this is going to get real immediately.”

I was a senior in college, and Kai had just graduated — and he’d decided that it was time for us to start dating.

But it wasn’t really “dating.” You can’t date someone who’s been one of your best friends for a decade.

There’s no “What’s your favorite movie?” There’s no discovery phase where you take stock of each other’s quirks and habits.

For us, it was an epiphany phase. Realizing that all those quirks were things we couldn’t live without. Realizing that neither of us were willing to put enough distance between us to date anyone else.

And once we were together, all the years we’d been friends became a part of our new relationship. Grandfathered in. Like our story had begun before we even realized we were the main characters.

Kai and I met at McMillan and then went to North High and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln together. We were friends the whole time. We were in drama together, we were editors on the high school newspaper…

It’s kind of weird — when you live with someone who’s been your friend since seventh grade, you get all of each other’s references. I don’t know how often other couples reminisce about their teen years, but we have inside jokes that go back to 1985.

Which keeps those years alive for us, I think.

You know how your oldest friends make you feel young? Kai makes me feel young.

Not 12 years old. Just … unpretentious. Hopeful.

Sometime it’s embarrassing to think that he remembers me at my most awkward and obnoxious. (I was so full of my opinions in high school and so ready to argue.)

But it’s a comfort, too.

The first time he told me that he loved me, I knew that he meant it. That he couldn’t be confused or deluded about what he was getting into.

And when he said it — I felt like his feelings for me lived outside of time.

Like, if he could love me knowing where I’d been, he must love the trajectory I was on. He must love what I was going to become.

That’s how I love Kai.

I’m not saying that growing up together has made our marriage easy. (Even our friendship was never easy.) And nothing that came before could have prepared us for the hurricane that is parenthood so far.

But it’s given us something to hold onto during the storms. Something set in concrete.

And it’s always made me feel like we have something special to protect. It’s a powerful thing to believe in your own epic romance…

I believe our paths crossed early because we’re meant to be on the same one. We’re meant to have as many years here together as we can.

Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com

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9 Comments »

  • bethany actually said:

    Well said. I remember when I first heard somewhere that you and Kai were married, I thought, “Huh? I had no idea they’d ever been more than friends!” I guess you weren’t when I knew you. But I love the idea that your friendship made your romance epic right from the start. I only knew my husband for six months before we started dating, but we were good friends and had that history when one day we looked at each other and realized if we didn’t try dating one another we could be missing something really great. We have always referred to it as our paradigm shift.

    Reading this makes me really excited to read your book soon!

    # 13 February 2011 at 10:23 am
  • Amy said:

    What a great story. Thanks for sharing this with us.

    # 13 February 2011 at 1:27 pm
  • Janelle said:

    I had no idea you knew your husband for so long. That’s pretty amazing! I have a friend from high school who also knows the good, the bad, and the ugly. He gets me, because he knows where I’m from and how I got to “here”. We have strong feelings for each other and if we weren’t separated by thousands of miles and different stages of life, we might give the relationship thing a try. Maybe someday, somehow, we’ll end up at the right place and time. Who knows?

    # 13 February 2011 at 3:51 pm
  • ixnay said:

    I love a good love story!

    # 14 February 2011 at 10:14 am
  • Diane said:

    What a satisfying story Rainbow :) ……………very heartwarming to read. Are those you and your husband’s hand? Beautiful picture.

    # 14 February 2011 at 5:34 pm
  • Rainbow Rowell (author) said:

    Thank you. This one was pretty hard to write – and even harder to publish. I still wonder whether I was sharing too much. This was only the second column I’d written about my husband.

    Bethany — I love the use of “paradigm shift.”

    Janelle — I know I’m a pathetic romantic, but that actually sounds like the beginning of a great love story.

    And Diane — No! Those aren’t my hands. My hands looks like I’ve spent 20 years working in the fields. They’ve always looked that way, even when I was a teenager. I tried to find a good picture of McMillan Junior High to use with this post, but alas.

    # 15 February 2011 at 7:06 pm
  • Ranger said:

    I’ve decided that instead of a Hallmark card, I’m going to give this column to my wife for our anniversary. (With some flowers of course.)

    # 16 February 2011 at 10:05 am
  • Mary Connealy said:

    Rainbow, I met my husband for the first time at a Rural School Track Meet. We were in eighth grade. We then went to the same highschool. We started dating when we were Juniors, but we were good friends before that. I hesitated to say yes when he asked me out because I figured no way would it work out and I’d lose one of my best friends.

    But, 4 years of dating, 34 years of marriage, four grown daughters and two grandchildren later…I’m gonna go ahead and admit saying yes was the right way to go.

    # 17 February 2011 at 12:06 pm
  • Noelle said:

    Wow Rainbow…that gives hope to the rest of us that maybe True Love does exist. Thank you for sharing.
    (I’m off to find my jr high yearbook now…)

    # 25 February 2011 at 1:30 pm