In honor of our upcoming 5-year anniversary, I’ve invited my partner in almost all things, Anthony, to join me in answering some of the questions many of you have posed regarding our relationship. As lots of you know, Anthony and I started dating in 2014 when he slid into my OkCupid DMs. We got married in 2018, which was pretty surprising to me. I didn’t think I’d want to get married again after my divorce, but I found myself quite head over heels with The Piano Guy in the South Loop and was excited to do things right the second time around.
Sadly, lots of people don’t learn from their mistakes in love. Indeed, the divorce rate for second marriages is higher than it is for first marriages! I sometimes think that we are wired to seek out partners who are ill-suited, but provide the familiarity of trauma and drama, right? For instance, my therapist says that I have an ongoing narrative in my head, what she calls “The Joanne Sucks Story.” Try as I might, I usually end up doing things that reinforce that story because in some sick perverted way… it makes me feel better?
Which was why she was a little shocked when I described how different my relationship with Anthony has been from my first love. He challenges that narrative every single day, in his own somewhat brusque, direct, and sometimes arrogant way: “I know everything and one of those things is that you are EXTRAORDINARY.”
Believe it or not, it isn’t easy to believe him. My brain readily deploys imposter syndrome, body dysmorphic disorder, and just plain old low self-esteem in response to Anthony’s volley, but the thing is… He’s ALWAYS there. He never abandons the fight. He never walks away from it. As he said to me once, a little annoyed because I was bugging him about whether I’d made the right decision to leave my lawyer job for the 27th time, “I have more faith in us than any two people on earth.”
For more on how I ultimately concluded that Anthony was The One, check out Episode 53 called “Will You Marry Me?” Otherwise, let’s get into it!
