I have a friend I’ll call Joe. Joe was one of the most amazing people I ever met. I worked with him in my former life as an assistant KM at a country club for a couple of years. I learned a lot from him. Working in kitchens is about as stressful as it gets, but he was the guy you loved to have around in that environment. He was untouchable. Nothing phased that man. I’ll never forget the day that it was just he and I on a Sunday afternoon. That day it seemed the entire city decided to have lunch at the same time. He and I ran around feverishly for a while until it was obvious I was about to snap. In the moment before I broke down in a puddle of blibbering emotion on the floor behind the line, he charged out front and started yelling and pointing at things. Somehow all of this yelling and pointing ended with us surviving that rush. That is one of the things I remember him by. Calm, cool and collected. Just with it. I’m glad to still have him as a friend.

At the time I was in a tumultuous, roller coaster relationship with a girl who in hindsight pretty much put me through the ringer. I was kept only as close as she wanted me to be at the moment. It was a lot of fighting and wondering and worrying. I often went to Joe for advice, and he told me something that has stuck with me ever since.

If you do anything other than laugh and have sex in the first six months of a relationship, it’ll never work.

The older I get, the more I realize he is absolutely right.  It may be a little brash.  Sure, it brushes the Notebook-like perception of young love and romance aside for something far more primal and guttural, but why dance around it?  Sex is an awesome thing.  Life is complicated.  Bills, kids, money, politics, trips to the store and trips to the hospital.  Life is so, so complicated, but the beginning of a new relationship shouldn’t be.  It should be everything marriage isnt: simple, instinctual, immediate and natural.  Two people putting forth the best of what they are.  Does it get any better than that?

One day.