Today marked Nik and my two year anniversary. Back in October, on his birthday, I asked him to “marry” me. Of course we do not currently live in a nation that recognizes same gender couples as equal, nor do we live in a state that offers such recognition. But the truth is that nothing is more important than our love for one another. We both agreed that we didn’t want to have kind of public ceremony as we both felt they often become more about those attending then the couple. Together we co-wrote our vows of commitment and we drove up to the wine country, into the trees, and privately exchanged the following:

Our Vows of Commitment

Today we choose to send our intent of commitment to our lifetime partnership out into the looneyverse. We acknowledge that this decision is not made lightly nor based solely on the feelings on love. Rather, we make this statement as witness to our decision to love one another in fun times and rough, in happiness and pain. We choose one another as partners through this crazy, beautiful world.

We recognize that this bond is not meant to be a fetter. A joining is a partnership, not two people becoming one. Two minds cannot fuse, two souls cannot merge, two hearts cannot keep to the same time. If two are foolish enough to try this, one must overwhelm the other, and that is not love, nor is it compassion, nor responsibility. We are two people who choose to walk the same path, and bridge our differences with love. We pledge to remember and respect those differences and learn to understand them, as they are part of what brought us together in love.

We affirm that neither of us shall seek to change the other, for no person has the right to do so. We acknowledge that in our humanity we may cause each other pain, but that will never be our intent and we promise to always do our best to also seek to ease the pain of the other.

We have confidence in the importance of laughter and promise to help one another look for the brightness in life. Should that laughter fade, we promise to search for it together, holding on to the positive in one another.

We recognize that we may place burdens on one another, but that doing so will never be our intent. We promise to share in each other’s burdens so that we may lighten the load, while helping our spirits grow.

We believe in supporting one another’s dreams and promise to dream together to create new realities and hopes, while allowing each of us to be fulfilled as individuals.

We accept that we might cause the other to be angry, but that it will never be our intent and we promise to face that anger through honest, open communication and use it to temper and strengthen our relationship.

We believe in honoring our relationship through honesty, trust, and communication even when it is hard or painful to do so. We promise to never give cause to break this honor for we respectfully recognize that we hold in our very hands the ability to make or break this relationship.

With these promises we believe, to the best of our abilities, that we now make this commitment with clear intentions and from a place of genuine love. And in our commitment, we claim a union forged stronger than any legal system could infer. In this bond, we move forward together in promise and love.