seanbobfrank:

This one is for tallgirlshortboy

When Melia and I started dating, I didn’t expect people to make such a big deal about our height difference. Didn’t even realize it was an issue to many people. I started to notice when we would go out that some people really didn’t know how to react: some would giggle, others would give us disapproving looks, and some would pretend not to notice us.

Once, a drunken cowboy jeered mockingly at us “Oh my god, you guys are, like, so cute” in a voice eerily reminiscent of Adventure Time’s LSP as he stumbled past us in an embrace. The most unsettling experience so far happened in a Hastings when we noticed a couple of twenty something girls over our shoulders measuring with their hands how much my lovely girl towers over me and laughing as they darted out of sight.

I’ve always been pretty self conscious about my height as it is. I always asked Melia in the beginning of our relationship if it was weird to kiss someone a whole head shorter than her. Before people started really pointing it out, she would ask me “Do you think we look weird to other people?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

I was being generous, and not very forthcoming about how sometimes the looks of some passerby would send pangs of shame through me as they sized the pair of us up. She’s tall and beautiful; I’m short and pretty plain looking. A lot of people look at us and can’t reconcile what they’re seeing because we don’t look “normal” together (the average hetero couple usually puts the female at about 80% of the male’s height).

But it hasn’t all been uphill. Our friends and family have all been so supportive of our relationship. Recently in Jackson Hole on our way back from Boise, a gas station clerk took a moment to gush to us about how happy it made her to see us together; she said that she felt we were making a statement, and kept emphasizing that love takes many forms.

I wish I could bewitch our critics to see the pair of us as we see each other, and as we see ourselves as a couple. When I see photos of us together, I see how happy we make each other. I see a great relationship built upon years of trust and friendship. I see the love that will bring us closer every day and ultimately outlive us. I see what so many people spend their whole lives searching for in all of the wrong places and all of the wrong people because they haven’t learned yet that you love with your heart and not with your eyes.