Jenny is 32 and Claire is 29. They've been together four years, married one. The met in a bar eight years ago when they were both in other relationships.

Was there any kind of spark in the beginning?

Claire: I always say it was love at first sight and I knew we were gonna be together someday.

Jenny: I'm very monogamous so I was like, "This is my friend, Claire."

Claire: I wasn't ever going to say anything inappropriate or do anything inappropriate while she was with someone else, of course. So once she was finally single, I knew that I was gonna say something and it had been built up over three years where all my friends knew I liked her but she didn't know.

Jenny: I had no idea.

Claire: We were hanging out a bunch but we both didn't really have good living sitch because we were still sharing places with our exes even though it was over.

Jenny: So we'd go out with a friend and then spend the night at their house because we didn't want to go home to our exes. And then one night we went to, ironically, this dance party at a club called Cockblock and Claire totally cockblocked me. I kept trying to dance with girls and she was like, "No. Nope! You can't do that. There's no way you're getting in another relationship."

Claire: That's what happens with lesbians, it's like you make out with a girl and she's your girlfriend for the next six years! So I was like, I gotta head this off at the pass. It's my one chance!

Jenny: So she was like, "Listen, I have a crush on you and you just need to hear me out." [Earlier] that night we were getting ready to go out to this party and she was like, "How do you think I look?" And I was like, "You look great. Good job, buddy." And she was like, "No. Look at me." And I was like, Oh, wait a second. I'm attracted to my friend. I was constantly thinking about her and couldn't get her off my mind. So a couple weeks later I was like, "Alright, let's just do this."

Tell me about the proposal.

Jenny: I wanted to propose after like six months but I was like, Calm down. My philosophy about relationships is that something happens after a year of being together. Some walls break down and suddenly it's not as great. You start to see the other side, you know? So I was like, Just wait a year. I [wanted] to totally surprise her. My brother makes film so we made a music video. I took our song and I rewrote the lyrics. I was like all set up to project the music video in the same bar we met in at midnight on New Year's Eve and then propose to her. Then our friends got engaged in a very public setting and Claire was like, "Oh my god, if you ever did that to me I would kill you."

Claire: [Laughs] This was days before.

Jenny: So I did it at home.

What was the main motivator to get married? Why take it to that next step?

Jenny: I just wanted to be able to say, "This is my wife." I know it's heteronormative, but I wanted that legitimacy, when we have kids especially. Also I just really want to be with Claire for the rest of my life.

Claire: It was kind of a hard decision for me, actually. I did a lot of queer activism through all my teens and 20s, and I was with a lot of anti-assimilationist type crowds, and I always thought I wouldn't get married or have children. But the older I got, the more I wanted it. When we got together, I really started to want that with Jenny. The world has changed so much for gay rights in terms of the way it was when I was a teenager, it's just such a different environment and I don't feel like those tactics necessarily still hold, like anti-assimilation. Most people I know have no problem with gay people. They may have ignorant moments but they're not bigoted, so it's sort of bigoted to say, "Queer people should be separate. We shouldn't be integrated into society." It didn't seem like that made a lot of sense as I got older.

What do you argue about?

Jenny: We're not usually a couple who fights but we did have one big, big fight.

Claire: We went to this club, which was not like us at all, and some girl tried to kiss Jenny and I basically freaked out and got really mad. She didn't do anything, it's fine, but I was really angry with her. This was after we were engaged but before the wedding and my best friend was like, "Are you sure you want to do this? It's not too late to cancel."

Wait, Jenny, I'm not trying to stir up the fight again, but what happened?

Jenny: I had an alternative personality in college…

Claire: [Laughs] You're making it sound like you're a crazy person! She was what we like to call "a dog."

Jenny: I tried to play girls, it was so stupid. Anyways, it was a tense experience to plan the wedding, there was a lot of pressure, and we went to this club and I think I just reverted to this alternative person because I was a little bit tipsy. I just wanted to dance, and I was dancing with some girls, which was not cool in the first place...

Claire: I was fine with that. We never go to clubs and I never dance at a club with Jenny, so she wanted to dance and we were all dancing together and I kind of gradually was like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna sit over here and wait for this to be over." You guys were dancing near a wall and she just backed you up to the wall and tried to kiss you and that's when I looked over and I was like, "Yeah, we need to leave now."

Jenny: I felt really bad.

Claire: The next day I was like, "I'm still mad at you but I still love you and I'm not gonna leave you or anything."

Jenny: I think over the arc of our relationship it's not so much what we fight about but how we communicate has gotten exponentially better. I think that's the best part of marriage, it's like, "Well, we're stuck with each other her so we better figure this out." Not only that — we better figure out how in the future to say what we need to say without going down this crappy road we just went down.

How has your sex life changed since you've been together?

Claire: I think it's gotten better. We've gotten so much closer now and we're better at how we communicate and not fighting. That's made our sex life a lot better. Also we feel safe with each other so we feel more open to doing things we haven't done before we were with each other.

Jenny: It's more frequent and I'm not entirely sure why. It amped up after [we got married], which is great because I was scared to death that it would slow and steadily decline.

Claire: That's her major fear in relationships in general because in her bad relationship, that was a problem. That's something we talk about and work on, like I try to work really hard to make her not feel rejected or like she's bothering me if I don't want to. A lot of times you'll have a night where you just watch TV all night and then you're tired and you go to bed and nothing happens, so it's more like, "Hey, let's turn off the TV at eight tonight." You know, "Wink-wink." Setting that tone early on in the night is something we do.

Is there anything you wish you'd hashed out before you got married?

Claire: No, something we're really about is having a lot of intention. Like right now, we're trying to have a kid. We talked about having children before we got married. We each want to have one, but me first. It's not practical for her in grad school right now.

Are you buying sperm? Borrowing sperm?

Jenny: That actually has been the most... "contentious" is a hard word but I think we kind of have a little bit of tension there. So far we've been buying it and it's just super weird for both of us to be part of the medical industrial complex. It's such an intimate, personal thing and then there's this whole corporation that's part of it. It's weird. So we've been talking about alternatives and we're not sure we're gonna stick with that.

Claire: We had a bad experience and they wrote us a letter and were like, "We'll give you guys a free insemination cycle." So we're kind of debating that.

What was your bad experience?

Claire: They were mean to us. I had called to try to say we were gonna come in and we came in and they were gonna try to charge us a fee because they didn't get the message. They said they had to charge a same day fee. Are you fucking kidding me? We paid literally thousands of dollars and that's how you're going to treat us? So we did a renegade insemination, is what we've been calling it. You have to take the tank and then you have to return it and they charge you daily for the tank and I was so angry and I didn't want to give these people anymore money so we took the sperm out of the tank and gave her back the tank right there, like, five minutes later. We had to do the insemination in the car.

Jenny: We had to drive around to try to find a private area. I think that's why we have such a good relationship; anytime there's any sort of adverse situation, we're like, "OK, are we on the same team on this? Good. Let's do this and get it done."

What are you guys most looking forward to in your marriage?

Claire: Kids, for sure. And we really want to buy a house someday. We're sick of paying rent.

Do you have any advice?

Jenny: If you don't love someone exactly how they are, then you shouldn't be in that relationship. I've been in a long relationship where I wanted the person to change dramatically. I just really like Claire exactly how she is.

Do you and your spouse want to tell your story? Or do you know a great couple who should tell theirs? Email secretlifeofmarrieds@gmail.com to submit for this column.

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 for a new interview. Previously: I'm a Prison Guard Who Married an Inmate.

Jane Marie is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io