Fiancé.
Doesn’t that word have a wonderful ring (pardon the pun) to it? I find myself looking for every opportunity to use it. “Allow me to introduce my fiancé”. “I think that my fiancé might have made a reservation. “I will need to first check with my fiancé”.
And yes, my fiancé is MMS. Miracle of miracles, she said yes.
Getting up the courage was no small matter. Firstly, long before we were an item, at the time that we were just coffee buddies, I mentioned that, despite my experience with love and marriage, I hoped that a happy marriage was still in my future. She came out quite strongly that she did not believe in marriage, and in any event, my marriage had not given me any more protection from the devastation of infidelity than her relationship arrangement had given her. I knew that if I asked the question and the answer were no, my heart would not survive the hurt.
Then there was the small matter of my health situation. While I passionately wanted her to be my wife and Sunshine to become my adopted daughter, I hoped that this desire was driven by the deepest and purest love a man had ever had, but worried that it was possibly the most selfish thing any man in my position could ever do. Invite someone to twin their life with you, just to then go and leave them, in the most permanent way, a little while later.
I dealt with these in what I think is a rather innovative way. Since February there were a few things that I desperately wanted to do. The proposing being the top of this list. So, one Sunday I took her for a walk, explained to her that, over the past year, she had become my trusted partner in every aspect of my life. That there were some things that I was struggling with and needed my partner’s help to decide on how best they could be done. We discussed my list and obviously, she came up with the perfect approach for each, and then I said that there was one more. I explained about not being certain about the thing being driven by purest love or blind selfishness. I then asked that if I ever got up the courage to ask her to marry me, what her answer might be.
After first calling me a “bloody sneaky bugger”, she said that if ever I asked, the answer would be, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
As most of you know, the surgeon who removed the lump from my neck, and told us quite directly that it was so obviously ugly that he knew it was serious, but that in his years of experience with these things, the folk with the best survival chances were those who had a strong loving support structure around them, and then clear goals to live for. He said that from what he saw around my bed, it was clear that I had the first well covered, so all we needed to work on was the goals. From the D/S thread, you will know that we have done pretty well on the 2nd as well. And a just completed trip to Europe, this time just for MMS and I, was one of those.
This one was a little different to the previous ones. As I said, this one was just the 2 of us. It was longer than most. In some respects, it was even more over the top than any of the previous ones. But also, this one was all about bucket list things, and sharing each of our very favourite, secret places with the other.
This one was about seeing the tulip fields in the Netherlands, standing on a Normandy beech at sunset as a lone bugler played the last post, eating waffles in Belgium and crepes in France, taking a kissing selfie up the Eifel tower. Seeing Keukenhof at its best. Sitting in the very garden that inspired Monet’s “waterlilies”. Sharing my secret “locals only” favourite restaurant in Amsterdam and her repaying the favour with brasserie in Paris where on a Saturday midmorning, it was just her and I.
What could be a more perfect opportunity for me to ask the question. Any of the above locations could have offered the perfect setting for me to ask my question. But I did not want anything else to intrude in our special moment, so I waited to the very end of the trip and we made a pilgrimage to Delft. In Delft, there is a tiny coffee shop, at the front of a family run hotel. It overlooks a sidewalk and then a canal. It has only 2 tables. Each with just a 2-seater couch and 2 chairs. It was a place that we had all fallen in love with on our December trip. It was perfect. I asked. She answered, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
I never believed that life could ever be this good. I wish that there were some way that I could generously share this around SI. It is criminal for just one man to have this much happiness.
