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"  Lindsey is 34 years old. Erin is 36 years old. They have been together for eight years and married for four. Did you live together before getting married? Lindsey: [Laughs.] Yeah. Well, we were gonna be roommates but we started dating instead. Erin: Ughhh, I feel like that&amp;#039;s such a lesbian thing to do! Who proposed? And did you talk about it beforehand? Lindsey: We had talked about getting married but didn&amp;#039;t know if we wanted one of us to propose or for it to be a surprise. So, we were in San Francisco and we had these rings in mind at Tiffany&amp;#039;s and we were like, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s buy those rings!&amp;quot; and then we called our photographer friend and she came and we decided to make that our elopement. It was basically the wonderful staff at Tiffany&amp;#039;s scurrying around us and saying, &amp;quot;People get married all the time on our patio! Why don&amp;#039;t you guys go out there?&amp;quot; Was there any drama surrounding it?  Lindsey: Our families were really just not on board. We&amp;#039;d said for years, &amp;quot;If we got married would you come?&amp;quot; and of course my parents were like, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d really have to pray about that.&amp;quot; Erin: But I do think Lindsey&amp;#039;s parents really gave it some thought. My parents were like, &amp;quot;Hey! I&amp;#039;m in Miami; I&amp;amp;#146;m in Colorado dating a cowboy.&amp;quot; They were just so checked out. Lindsey: Erin did the post hoc asking-permission-from-my-dad conversation. You know, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sure you&amp;#039;ve dreamed your whole life of someone asking for Lindsey&amp;#039;s hand in marriage, but I didn&amp;#039;t want to ask for it because we thought you&amp;#039;d say no.&amp;quot; They seemed to be happy with the way we went about it, other than the fact that they&amp;#039;re not generally happy about it. But they&amp;#039;re happy we didn&amp;#039;t put them in a position where they&amp;#039;d have to choose. Did you have any fears about marriage? Erin: I think I definitely did because I have a family where there&amp;#039;s divorce, cheating&amp;amp;#133; Lindsey: And private investigators to catch the cheating! So what was the main motivator to tie the knot?  Erin: I remember this conversation we had, sitting in the windowsill, and talking about being lied to and cheated on and all these things, and us talking about it together and saying, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want that.&amp;quot; Lindsey: I remember the windowsill conversation too! I was saying like, &amp;quot;And I just traveled around the world with an ex. That kinda sucks!&amp;quot; I wanted to travel around the world with someone I could talk about it with in five years. This is everyone&amp;#039;s biggest concern: Has your sex life changed? Lindsey: Yeah, over time? Yeah. When we first lived together, we went dancing all the time and it was a very charged sexual time. And then we&amp;amp;#146;d been best friends for so long, and the fact that it could be SO HOT with my best friend just blew my mind. We&amp;#039;d have, like, these epic weekends of sex and we&amp;amp;#146;d come up with weird names for shit. Erin: I wanted to make a book of all the names we&amp;#039;d come up with! Give me a couple... Erin: The cherry basket. The superwoman! Ha! I think it&amp;#039;s cool that you were having so much sex and it was so different for both of you that you had to make your own vocabulary for it. Erin: It&amp;#039;s not like since we got married it&amp;amp;#146;s different, but over years there&amp;#039;s been super-hot sexy times and then trailing off and then being sexy again and then falling off for a couple months. And now we realize it&amp;amp;#146;s us and we always bring it back. Every week, there&amp;#039;s always something we do to bring back the sex and tie it back in. Lindsey: If our sex life wanes at all now it&amp;#039;s because we&amp;amp;#146;re fighting about stuff. What do you fight about? Lindsey: I think it&amp;#039;s about how we fight. It occurred to me that the biggest compromise I&amp;amp;#146;ve had to make is how much we fight. I did not expect to be fighting this much. How much do you fight? Lindsey: Almost every day, a little bit? And then sometimes every week we have big fights. And we resolve it within the day, it&amp;#039;s just that Erin gets mad. Like maaad. Erin: I think I get pretty mad! Lindsey: I think it&amp;#039;s our style of fighting. I&amp;amp;#146;m remembering that time we went camping. Erin: Oh, the poison oak?! Lindsey: Yes! We were way out by ourselves in the middle of North Carolina. I&amp;#039;m grabbing all our shit and she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t come camping to be in a ruuuuush.&amp;quot; And I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;The sun is setting in 20 minutes! If we want a fire and shelter, we&amp;#039;re about to lose our light!&amp;quot; I see it as &amp;amp;#147;urgent&amp;amp;#148; and she hears urgent as: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re doing it fucking wrong!&amp;quot; And then the next morning she&amp;#039;s standing in this giant patch of poison oak, and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Erin, oh my god, get the fuck outta there!&amp;quot; and she just interrupted me and was like, &amp;quot;Why are you always soooo upset!?&amp;quot; Erin: And the funny thing about this is right before that, I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Doo-dee-doo!&amp;amp;#148; romping around, having so much fun and she wants to be the buzz kill. So that&amp;#039;s me&amp;amp;#151; arguing back while I&amp;#039;m standing in poison oak. What&amp;amp;#146;s the most important thing you&amp;amp;#146;ve done for your marriage? Lindsey: Overall, it seems like listening; checking to make sure I really understand what she is saying helps me to understand who she is and often teaches me something about myself. But recently? The BEST thing was surprising her with a drum kit for Christmas so that we can create music together. It is so hot! Can you tell me the main difference between being in a dating relationship and being married? Lindsey: Married is better. Erin: Dating sucks! Lindsey: I think when you&amp;#039;re dating, you&amp;#039;re protecting yourself the whole time. Erin: Or less invested in some way... Lindsey: But if you&amp;#039;ve found someone who can actually commit to you, like, &amp;amp;#147;We&amp;#039;re gonna make this work, come hell or high water,&amp;amp;#148; then I don&amp;#039;t have to protect myself. I&amp;#039;m not holding back like I did when I was dating. Erin: I didn&amp;#039;t realize that someone would stay with me if I did some of these horrible things like my anger problem. In a dating relationship, I think I was holding back who I really was because I was afraid. Lindsey: I think it makes everything better, even sex. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have thought that because everyone tells this story that when you&amp;#039;re experimenting and having lots of sex, that&amp;#039;s the best part, but it&amp;#039;s not. You can still experiment and have lots of sex, but if you&amp;#039;re with somebody who knows you really well, they can be better at it. Erin: The fun parts are more fun. The Secret Life of Marrieds is a weekly series of interviews with married couples about the things no one tells you about marriage. Check back every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST for a new interview. Jane Marie is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter. Photo credit: Shot by Josh Vining "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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