"A love letter to my husband after 15 years together".

After 15 years together, Debrief Daily’s Sarah Macdonald has written a letter to her husband. Because romance isn’t just for the first few years after you meet and fall in love.

When my husband and I were just girlfriend and boyfriend he was sent overseas for work. I stayed in Australia.

We didn’t just send long, soppy letters; we had love books that we’d write in every night then swap when we were reunited. We recorded mixed CDs for each other and talked daily. Our relationship was full of longing and unrequited lust, sweet pain and separation.

It was the love we see in books and movies: romantic, passionate, painful, intense.

But this is the love letter I would write to him today.

Fifteen years on and our relationship is more mundane. It’s brief snatched shared moments, conversations about the kids and constantly interrupted by them. ‘We’ are forever distracted because we’re focused on the practical. Who is working early, who is working later, who is picking up, who is cooking dinner or picking up the take away, who is doing what and when the hell can we get to a movie?

But there is love in the drudgery and practicality of life.

Big love is in the little things.

There is love in my cup of tea in bed most mornings. In the lilies he buys many Saturdays and the 10am daily rushed phone call made to check in on me while he gets his coffee.

Big love is in the big things made up of many little acts.

My dad has been really ill. Life in crisis stuff. I’ve been daddy’s girl, rushing to the hospital, helping with mum, coming home a blithering mess and emotional jelly fish – transparent in grief, floppy in nature and gasping for air. He has been my rock. A warm wall of strength. He has held me and let me beat my fists against his chest in despair. He has listened to my laments, my fears, my fury and my rambling worrying.

He has woken at five every morning, walked the dog, taken the kids to school, done the shopping, made breakfasts, lunches and dinners, done the ironing, washing and driving. He has taught my daughter the periodic table and her French dialogue, he has settled my son into a new drum lesson, he has rung my mum to check on her and filled the freezer with food.

His love is spelt out in small gestures that build to a bold, beautiful giant of a love that is carrying me through.

I accept his love and partnership like I own it. I take him and it for granted. I’m not sure I deserve it. But I am thankful for him from a place that is new to me.

It’s a quiet admiration. A profound gratitude.

I am humbled by his devotion and I will never forget it.

Click through the gallery below to see some of pop-culture history’s greatest loves… 

This article was originally published on Debrief Daily.

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