I don’t post about this kind of stuff very often, but I’m making an exception for this happy occasion. At the end of September I went on my first date with an amazing woman. She was beautiful and she was everything I had told my friends I’d been looking for: fun, outgoing, talented, kind, supportive. Pretty quickly went from spending one or two nights together to three, four, five. By the end of March we were basically living together, though I didn’t officially move in until May. We started shopping for engagement rings around that time, but we won’t get engaged until this fall and at the moment we don’t plan to get married until 2016.
But things took an interesting turn a couple of weeks ago: my girlfriend needed a root canal, which sucks enough on its own. Things didn’t go well, the temporary filling fell out a couple of times, there was an infection and maybe a piece of nerve wasn’t removed. In the middle of paying for all of that, we wondered if I could just put her on my health insurance - so she asked me to be her domestic partner. My employer’s policies didn’t accommodate us, but I think we both hated the idea of agreeing to this and not following through. It would’ve been a letdown and there were still some good reasons to formalize our relationship. So that’s exactly what we did: filled out the application online, went to City Hall early Tuesday, and become official domestic partners. We got a little certificate and everything. One of our friends happens to manage a coffee shop near City Hall, so he was the first to congratulate us (with free coffee and pan au chocolat) while my now-partner alerted Facebook. We combined our checking accounts at the bank and went back to the site of our first date.
When the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant she ran out ahead of me, and after I was done paying I saw why: she’d grabbed the same table we shared on our first date. I got all choked up. It’s been an amazing 9+ months and I’m happier than I’ve been in years and years. We’re still at the beginning of a life together, but we’re family now.
