Getting married means people tell you one of two things. Either your relationship is made stronger in some inconceivable and hard-to-express way, or there’s no difference and the next decades are more of the same. I think there’s something that neither of these optimists and cynics have said to me since I married Maggie, and that’s the way that marriage is an externalisation of your inner self.

I love Maggie more each day, but I’d also say I loved her completely for the two years before we married. I identified as one team with her, and she was an integral part of my life, a touchstone for reflections, and central considerations to all significant decisions. Now that we’re married, I no longer have to ever clarify this to anyone, it’s obvious. Maggie is my wife, so from saying the word ‘wife’ to the ring on my fourth finger everyone now expects me to act, in line with the way I was already internally acting and thinking for the last two years.

Life feels simpler and I no longer have to couch our relationship with gravitas and sincerity, my sincerity is self-evident and my internal identity is coherent with my outer identity.

Like many people, I’ve spent a lot of my life considering how I want to express my identity, from the clothes I wear (unsuccessfully expressing most any identity), to the photos I post and the books I read, and then tell others I read ¹. My ring is simpler and clearer than all of these. Of course, unlike books or clothes, my ring is a far more binding form of identity. Perhaps that’s part of what provides the self-assurance and confidence, that inability to change, commitment, constant display. I wonder if facial tattoos have the same effect.