My wife and I are cuddling again. It is one of those things that brings so many associations with it, like when you hear a song from high school and memories come flooding back, or when you smell something you haven’t smelled in many years but you can remember the last place you did. My wife and I haven’t been cuddling for some time and it feels wonderful.

As I like to say, Gem and I were on the slow lane on the highway towards marriage; we had been together eight years by the time we got married. By the time we had our Okapis we had been together for eleven years. I don’t think either of us had any major complaints about our relationship; we became adults together, transitioned from those college kids to responsible grown-ups and no one knew ourselves better than each other.

Despite all of this our Okapis were like an earthquake in our relationship. On the Relationship Richter Scale, the initial tremor measured about 7.6 with aftershocks numbering in the thousands – some as high as 6.4. Frankly, when I look back I am awed that we survived. You can’t prepare for two at a time – especially when you’re not even prepared for one.

The first year was terrible. We were completely exhausted, drained and overwhelmed. I can’t really remember any non-baby conversations, though there must have been some. Our roles as mother and father crushed our husband and wife roles. The second year was a bit better and we started to periodically remember we had these other roles as well. We tried to make more time for time together and it helped a little. It really wasn’t until the third year that significant improvement occurred in our relationship. This year has been, by far, the best year for our marriage since our Okapis were born. But I still felt there as something not quite right – I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

I tried to explain it to The Former Corporate Mommy because of her post (The Core) a couple of days ago about her husband who is now the sole breadwinner (she recently quit her job to be a stay-at-home Mom). There is something terribly isolating about being the sole breadwinner, bearing the financial responsibility for the entire family, but also being the only one who leaves the house every day while my family stays home together. It made me feel very disconnected from them and in the beginning, with all of the pressure, exhaustion, being overwhelmed and completely insecure, it was too much to bear. I felt terribly alone, something that, sadly, comes pretty natural to me.

No one has ever loved me like my wife has. No one has ever come close. She was the first person in my life who loved me unconditionally, who taught me that you can love unconditionally. She was the first who loved me for me, who didn’t try to change me, but tried to help me be the real me. One day when we were out without the Okapis, Gem borrowed my cell phone to try and call the house to check on them. She tried to find our home number in contacts to quickly call.

“Where’s ‘Home?’” she asked.

“I don’t call ‘Home,’” I said. “I call you.” Unspoken was, You are my home.

When our Okapis were born the focus of almost all of that love and attention went to them and it left me feeling the way it had always been for me – lonely, isolated, and alone, exacerbated by all of my new responsibilities and pressures to carry the load myself. Thankfully, much of that has finally changed, but the sense of isolation of disconnectedness lingers like a chest cough that won’t go away.

Amazingly, cuddling helps to bring back all those feelings of what it was like before we had our Okapis, before the earthquake and the aftershocks completely changed the nature of our relationship. Cuddling is like feeling connected to someone again, the only someone I have ever truly felt connected to – until our Okapis came along. While my connection to them is very special to me, my wife will always be my first true love. She will always be how I define family, where I learned about love, where I learned about me.

What’s nice is I’m pretty sure she really likes the cuddling, too.