This Is The Milestone You'll Never Forget In A Lasting Relationship

There's a moment when time pauses and you feel like you're leaving your body. Hovering slightly aside from wherever you are, you can see the situation clearly. You can see the way the fire is crackling pleasantly, and all the faces around it are illuminated in shades of orange and red that highlight happiness in everyone's eyes as they watch the fire. There's laughter, harmonious and sweet, warmed by the time spent together and there. You know the kind of moment I'm talking about? The great pause.

You can have more than one of them. In fact, I think we have lots of them. We have lots of moments where time pauses, but we might not always be aware of it. Sometimes they slide by, leaving you warm in your belly with the memory of satisfaction and genuine pleasantries once the warmth is gone.

I have a collection of these memories, but lately moments like these are happening more and more. I'm grateful for their multitude. I think they're because of him. My heart has never been so full, never been held so carefully in a pair of hands. He's gentle, with soft hands. My heart beats steadily between his palms.

Hopelessly romantic, I see a different side of him than anyone else. He takes my hands when I'm sweaty and tired and pulls me into him. All I want to do is take a deep breath and inhale the moment, because I run across one of those great pauses no matter how I feel. Everything fades away the moment he's pulled me in, from worry, to responsibility, to excitement, it all fades. I'm left with white, vast blindness; I'm left with blinding satisfaction in his arms.

I have reached a point I've never reached before. My fears are real (to me, of course). Maybe not to anyone else, but if we're being honest, everyone has fears and is afraid of offering themselves to someone else without reciprocation. I'm afraid he won't accept parts of me that even I don't accept. I'm afraid that someday it will become too much, that I will become too much.

These aren't fears I can tell him, not normally. I don't want him to think about them because somehow, that validates that maybe my fear is real. Instead, I try to pretend those moments don't happen, that I don't think about doubt, fear or worry. When he asks me what's wrong, I know he knows that sometimes I'm afraid. When he asks me what's wrong, those doubts silence and I'm rectified into something more than my fears. Stillness finds me, and together they envelope me.

I've decided I won't question him anymore; I won't doubt his capacity to withstand me. Withstand my currents, my ebb and flow. His hands still hold my heart, and his fingers find their way through my hair. So, I relax. And I find myself in another moment of great pause. He's sleeping in our bed, and this is the first time I've said those words together. "Our bed."

He loves me with honesty. I sleep and eat and breathe and live beside a man who loves me so honestly that I believe his words. I believe him. I believe in him. I want nothing more, and yet I have so much more. His touches me so delicately, but with such intent that I can't help but believe his fingers were made to trace patterns on my skin and know me better than I would know the way myself.

He's a string of moments that I keep close to my heart, and I remember so vividly that they're part of my idea of the great pause. I don't think those moments happen with just anyone, you know? I think our great pause might be a person. If that's the case, if it's a person who makes life slow down and moments embed in our very person, then he's mine.

Always will I think of him like he is now, his blue eyes brighter when he looks at me resting just above a smile that makes me melt. It literally makes my heart skip a beat, and heat flood from my belly to my toes. I'll think of all the times he's taken my hands and made me dance, whether the music played or not. The times when his eyes met mine, and the world stopped spinning.

I wish a great pause for everyone. I wish a love like this for everyone. And should you find yourself with life stopped, like me, lay back and let it overcome you. Don't fight, don't resist, don't doubt.

The only thing left I have to say (I think), is to him. To ask one more thing of him:

Will you promise to love me like this, always?