Steve and Nadine

After seven (or is it eight?) years of being together, Steve and Nadine finally wed today. None of their friends expect to see any change in their relationship, since we all thought that they were married in everything but name already anyway.

Being a loner anti-social type, there are very few people whom I talk to every single day. Steve is in that rare few, and even on a one-to-one basis we're able to talk about all manner of, well, crap for hours on end. It's fair to say that Steve's one of my more closer mates.

If anyone is responsible for what little friendship I demonstrate to others, it's Steve. He's always picking up the tab and never gets irritated at the smaller things that pee the rest of us off, especially when it comes to his friends. He helps put things in perspective. Apart from all that he's also generous, funny and unashamedly brash, a trait that may have rubbed off a little on me as well. He's also a bit of a pervert but the less said of that, the better.

Unlike is typically the case, I knew Nadine before she and Steve became an item - in that way I can call her a friend in her own right and not by association. Full of integrity, she knows what her responsibilities are and won't complain (much) when she's asked to fulfill them. She's also super patient - a prerequisite when you're with someone like Steve I guess.

Although it happens less often, I don't think either of them realise how much I appreciated being their third wheel. They still remain the people I've seen the most amount of films with - the three of us were hitting West India Quay's Cineworld up to two times a week at one point. Being able to freely hang out with them as a couple has high value in a world where single people sometimes get left out, and even if I'm as half as welcoming (although Nadine did have to sit between Steve and me sometimes) as they were I'll consider it an achievement; I hope to be able to treat my single friends just as Steve and Nadine treated me.

I don't think I know a couple who are so comfortable together; where other relationships are based on compromise these two are able to remain honest and true to themselves in theirs. It's an aspiring quality and shows that you don't have to be someone you're not (as I'm sometimes being advised to) in order to maintain a successful relationship.

There are no fears in my mind about their future together; the proof is in the pudding and they've been together so long already today's nuptials is literally just a formality. Despite that, it was wonderful seeing them in their obvious happiness today as they cemented their relationship in front of their closest friends and family and I was proud to have been a witness to it.