When was the last time we laughed? Really laughed? Belly laughed?

We used to laugh all of the time, but then we got busy. Work and kids and projects and houses and ideas of what life was supposed to look like and where we were supposed to be and we forgot. We forgot to pay attention to what made us work well together from the very beginning—the ease in which we connected and restored the faith in ourselves and each other.

I would look at him and smile and remember that before him, there was loneliness an a void. Not a debilitating void, just a vacancy within my heart that was searching—always searching. But then I found him that day 11 years ago. He walked into the room, hung over from the night before, wearing his Boston Red Sox t-shirt, teacup in hand, wearily looking around for a seat to sit in.

And I knew, right then, we would be friends and then some.

Ours was a friendship that was safe and beautiful and lovely and fun. I could tell him I thought he was uptight (in a good way), and he would smile and say, “That means a lot coming from you,” and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

We were honest. We were rock-solid in our foundation.

And then out of that friendship there was sex; an extension of ourselves abandoned. We laughed and giggled and loved. Hot. Couldn’t-keep-our-hands-off-each-other hot. Hot in the way that my mother reading this now is blushing and commenting that it is a little too much. But still, steamy nonetheless.

The sex, though, was interwoven.

Carefully intertwined within the friendship. Not too much, not too little—a middle way. There was no cover up with it, no brushing under the rug because of it, no avoidance through it. Sex never replaced, it only enhanced. It was what connected the friendship to the above-average plane. It was amazing.

So today I am here to remind us: sex and friendship a good marriage makes—the basic foundation as to why this union works and still exists. We have to remember through everything—above all else—that any other foundation built by the two of us intertwined is nothing without these two pieces. It is us, the two of us, always and forever, in or out of the sack.

Relephant:

11 Ways to Maintain a Healthy Marriage.

How To Stay Married (If You Want to Stay Married).

Like elephant journal on Facebook.

Asst Ed:  Jane Henderling/ Ed: Sara Crolick

{Photo: via Dorrett on Flickr}