I’m a bachelor. 

I constantly leave the toilet seat up and don’t pick up my empty soda bottles after I finish them. I set them down next to the couch and don’t even think twice when the conversation gets roaring in the office and I negate the fact that I was supposed to be home more than an hour ago. 

These things are all true. And all of them drive my girlfriend absolutely insane.

But on Christmas Eve of the Year of our Lord 2014, the rubber officially met the road. 

Jason Campbell is off the market. 

As of now, I am a married man. 

This whole thing happened kind of suddenly. I’ve known her my entire life. We went to kindergarten together, and she used to write me love notes that my mother still has in a box somewhere at her house. This part of the story always melts the hearts of the women that hear it. It’s the Nicholas Sparks aspect of our relationship. 

We went to high school together and ran, relatively speaking, in the same social circles. Truth be told she wasn’t really my favorite person but then again I was, and to a point still am, extremely judgmental and tended to formulate opinions on what I saw rather than what was. 

We graduated, she went to San Diego and I did not – except for ill-advised trips to border towns and to party with my military friends lucky enough to earn a post there – and that’s where the two roads ended. 

Until about six months ago. 

Long story short, a flippant Facebook comment drew a flippant response that led to a unsuspecting first date to San Francisco that led to me showing her that I was really the man she should have been with all along. 

Of course, the same goes for me when it comes to her.

Just over two weeks ago I took this girl, who became Mrs. Amber Campbell, to the Bay Area under the guise that we were going to see a movie – one that we really did see. What she didn’t know was that earlier in the day I had bought an engagement ring and decided that it was time to pop the question. So after the movie, I asked her not to freak out if I blindfolded her, drove across the Bay Bridge and all the way up to Coit Tower, and walked her around the back of the monument where the sweeping views of the city skyline dance over the ridge of Russian Hill. 

It was here just five months earlier that I got my first kiss from her at the end of our first date, and I knew that when I got down on one knee – more of a cockeyed catchers stance actually – it was going to be with the city that had come to symbolize our love behind me. And when she took off the blindfold, I could hear all of the air come out of her lungs. 

And let me tell you, this is some sort of woman.

She’s much more private than I am when it comes to the details of our relationship, but those little moments where I sneak a loving look and watch her do something like wriggle her nose or flip her hair or sashay into a room and attract the intention of everybody she passes simultaneously are things I can’t keep to myself. I blog about them. I post them on Facebook. I have angered friends because their wives are jealous that they don’t talk about them in the same vein. 

I’m sorry gentlemen, but when somebody has the power to bring you to your knees with a single glance they attain almost mythical status. 

Frank Sinatra sings about women like this.

Dozens of “dead white guys” spent their lives trying to put the feeling I get when I’m with her into words. Fitzgerald. D.H. Lawrence. T.S. Eliot. Faulkner. Hemingway.

I’ve read them all, and didn’t know until know that those words actually had meaning – that there was power and experience behind them. 

That's why I finally became a married man. I made a pledge to spend the rest of my life with a woman that has become my confidant and well as my companion. 

I start a new path and a new chapter of my life that is as refreshing as a morning swim in a cold alpine lake. 

Is it scary? 

Not really. It’s different. I’ve never been here before. I don’t think I’ll ever be here again. 

Nobody knows for sure what is built to stand the test of time – the unsinkable Titanic couldn’t make a single trip. 

But this has all of the makings of a classic American love story, and every day is a new page and a new chance to create something unique and something special. 

Now all I have to do is remember to put the toilet seat down.