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After twenty years of marriage, people tend to assume they know what love looks like. Comfort. Familiarity. Quiet evenings and shared routines that no longer need much explanation.
In many ways, they’re right. My husband and I have built a life that feels steady. We talk easily. We enjoy driving places together and filling the time with conversation. We can sit in the same room without needing constant attention from each other. There’s a deep friendship in that kind of marriage, and in many ways, it’s good. Very good.
But that isn’t the whole picture.
Last week made that quite clear. Every day that week, I wanted to have sex with my husband. Not in a vague, romantic sense. I mean I wanted sex. I thought about it. I went to bed expecting there was a fair chance it would happen.
Some nights I curled up next to him, waiting to see if he would turn toward me. Other nights I put my hand on his leg so it was obvious where I stood. There was nothing particularly subtle about it.
And every night, there was a reason it didn’t happen. He didn’t feel well. He was sore from working out. He was exhausted. It was late. All of those things were true. None of them were unreasonable.
And yet I still wanted sex.
Not because anything was wrong between us. Not because I felt unloved. I wasn’t lying there wondering if he cared about me. I knew he did.
But being loved and being wanted sexually are not the same thing, and I was very aware of that difference by the end of the week.
I do initiate sometimes. But if I’m honest, I prefer when he does. There’s something about being chosen in that moment that feels different. Especially now, when I am more aware of my body than I used to be. I am not the size I once was, and while I don’t spend much time dwelling on that, it sits there quietly in the background.
When he initiates, it tells me he still finds me sexy.
Not in a general, long-married way. Not in the “of course I love you” sense. It tells me he looks at me and wants sex with me. That matters more than I tend to admit.
Years ago, when we attended marriage retreats, the message for wives was always the same. Your husband has needs. Physical needs. Be attentive to them. The assumption was that men want sex more, and women respond to that.
That has never quite fit my marriage.
No one ever talks about the wife who wants sex more. The one lying there awake, fully aware of it, waiting to see if he will turn toward her. It’s a slightly awkward place to sit, if I’m honest. Not painful. Not dramatic. Just… there.
In a long marriage, desire doesn’t line up neatly. It shifts with energy, stress, health, and timing. Some nights it matches. Some nights it doesn’t.
Nothing is broken. Nothing is wrong. But the difference is still there.
You can have a good marriage—a steady one, a happy one—and still lie next to your husband wanting sex when he doesn’t.
That doesn’t simply disappear because everything else in the marriage works.
— Kate
I married young.
Twenty felt grown at the time. It does not, in hindsight.
We did not have a dramatic love story. There were no grand gestures or cinematic moments. No lightning bolt when our hands touched. I was attracted to him, yes — but our beginning was steady, not electric.
If I’m honest, I used to wonder whether that meant something was missing.
I’ve read the novels. The ones that describe a spark so strong it feels almost violent. The kind of chemistry that consumes the room. I’m not sure we ever had that. What we had was conversation. Laughter. Ease. A shared sense that life together would be calm rather than chaotic.
Over twenty years, that steadiness has held.
We have never had a disagreement so sharp that I thought we might split. There have been seasons of distance. Moments when I wondered if we married too quickly. A period, around ten years in, when I quietly questioned whether I had mistaken comfort for compatibility.
Those thoughts did not linger. But they existed.
What we have built is something less dramatic and, perhaps, more durable.
We talk. Constantly. The best parts of our holidays are often the drives — long stretches of road where conversation unfolds without effort. We were careful, even when our daughter was young, not to lose ourselves entirely in parenting. We did not want to wake up to an empty house and realize we were strangers.
Now, with twenty years behind us, I can say this:
I am still myself.
Marriage did not swallow me. It did not shrink me. I have always known I could stand on my own two feet if I needed to. That independence has never threatened him, and his steadiness has never confined me.
Do I sometimes wish for more tenderness? Yes. I wish he would come up behind me in the kitchen and wrap his arms around me without prompting. I wish for small, unasked-for gestures. Not grand passion — just quiet closeness.
But longing for more does not mean lacking love.
It means I am still human. Still wanting. Still alive to the idea that marriage can continue growing, even twenty years in.
There is something deeply reassuring about choosing one another, again and again, without fireworks. Without spectacle.
Just two people who talk well. Travel well. Think similarly. Believe similarly.
It may not be the sort of love written about in novels.
But it is ours. It has grown with us — quieter, deeper, more certain.
And after twenty years, that feels like something rare.
– Kate
I’ve written here before.
And then I’ve disappeared.
Each time I came back, I told myself I would be more consistent. More disciplined. More committed. And each time, life folded in on itself and this little corner of the internet went quiet again.
But this isn’t one of those posts.
This isn’t a promise that I’ll post every Tuesday at precisely 7:00 a.m. with a perfectly polished thought about the state of the world. This is something quieter. More certain.
I need a place to think out loud.
The world feels louder than it ever has — and not in a good way. England doesn’t feel like the England I left as a child. America doesn’t feel like the America I grew to love. The church I once called home isn’t home anymore. Even long-held assumptions feel as though they are shifting beneath my feet.
And yet — I’m not hopeless.
I’m observant. I’m thoughtful. I’m sometimes unsettled. But not afraid.
So this space will be where I sort through it all. Faith. Marriage. History. Politics. Culture. Love. The strange and beautiful tension of raising a daughter while still figuring out parts of myself.
Some posts may be careful and essay-like.
Some may be raw.
Some may simply be a question I cannot shake.
But they will be honest.
This isn’t a restart.
It’s simply a continuation — without deleting what came before.
If you’re reading, stay.
If you disagree, that’s quite all right.
If you’re also trying to make sense of things, perhaps we’ll sort some of it out together.
– Kate
Kate Alderwick 