I think the gap would have been easier if we’d been three years apart instead of seven. Three years means you grow up more in parallel: you’re both in school at the same time, you’re both navigating adolescence in proximity, you’re both figuring out the same kinds of things in the same general era. Seven years means you’re always on different development timelines, always in different phases, always with different reference points for what the world expects.
The Willowmere situation was, in one way, the most acute version of the seven-year gap: I was the one with the savings, the financial stability, the credit history and the contract-signing capacity. She was the one with the vision and the desire and the budget that didn’t quite reach. We fell into our roles with a naturalness that felt, at the time, like the obvious way for things to go, and only afterward did I see how much the obvious way had actually cost us.
I cannot compress the seven-year gap. I cannot make myself twenty-nine or make her thirty-six. What I can do is try to see her as a complete person rather than as a younger version of a person who still needs some things handled, and I can ask before I arrange introductions, and I can say what I actually mean when I’m worried rather than reassuring from a position of altitude, and I can let her be the expert on her own wedding vision without offering a corrective perspective on which elements are going to matter to guests.