Yesterday marked the 16th anniversary of me asking Shane to be my boyfriend.

It seems insane to me that a decision I made at 19 was one of the best of my life and that I actually committed to something this hard at that age. Seriously, I changed my major at least 3 times after we started dating but the boy I forced to watch innumerable M*A*S*H reruns during that same period is still leaving his socks in my (our) living room? Wild.

I always heard that your partner shouldn’t be your best friend, and I would like to say that for me, that makes no sense. Who else would I want to share a home with? He’s definitely my best friend, the person that I want to be with all the time, and the one who knows all my secrets. If you tell me a secret, you tell us a secret. We’ve been together through college, grad/pharmacy school, job changes, career changes, parental deaths, pet deaths, 8 moves, 4 cities/towns, and all the uncertainty of COVID, the economy….and life in general in the 2020s. No one makes me laugh as hard or as much as he does, and there have been multiple times I’ve held my tears/breakdown until he’s with me because he’s my safe person.

Of course, our relationship isn’t perfect, that would require saintliness that I certainly do not possess and neither does he. But I think it’s perfect in all it’s messiness.

I wish a Shane for everyone. If you don’t have a Shane, keep looking.

Sarah

• Life & Family