Alt love songs for ten years in

The new relationship glow is definitively gone and children have swiped most of our free time. Let's celebrate!

The only recent photo of me and Will without kids is this selfie we took to send back to our son while we were out on a date. We intended to do one date per week this summer and so far have done one total. But check us out! On a date!

For my husband Will and I, this summer marks five years of marriage and ten years together. The second one feels significant—a decade together! We are getting into the territory of old friends, those wonderful relationships where “remember when’s” can stretch back into another era when you were a different you. He knew me before I started a company, before I called myself a writer, back when I used to go out to a club called Booty on Saturday nights until 2 am (did I ever really do this?). In our time together I’ve won and lost, I’ve gotten sick, I’ve had two kids. My world has expanded as I dashed around in my twenties, and it has shrunk back down to a tiny circle around our family as I plunged into the abyss of struggling to conceive and braved the gauntlet of raising young children. After a decade together, I feel like I can rightfully say we’ve been through some stuff.

This milestone feels bigger than I thought it would; it floats into my mind randomly—a decade!—and it makes me feel emotional. Usually I would offer many caveats and much light cynicism about something as highly Instagramified as marriage, but this moment is unexpectedly making me wax romantic. I feel like my marriage is becoming one of my life’s big accomplishments, that it’s something to celebrate, and that’s not how people around me typically talk about ho-hum marriages that are approaching middle age.

So to mark the moment, I’ve been passively creating a playlist, which is about as much as I can do in this phase of life. If I hear a song that feels like our relationship right now, I add it. This playlist isn’t really for us—Will doesn’t love this particular type of folky, saptastic music—it’s really for me. It’s music that gives me warm, pleasantly achy feelings about my ten-year relationship, and which I can use to generate those feelings on demand. At a time when the new relationship glow has definitively worn off and children have swiped most of our free time, it seems important to still be able to get those warm and fuzzies about it all.

But what types of songs do the trick ten years in? Not your standard love songs, for the most part. It is not a time of romantic ballads or sexy pop music or newlywed slow dance hits (though I do have one of those on the list). The songs that strike a chord for me are mostly steady and soft, they tend melancholy and nostalgic, but with undertones of power and hope.

Here are three songs from my list, for anyone looking for some “early-middle lifelong partnership inspiration” (hah). None are actually about a ten-year relationship, but all have something that spoke to mine.

The Long Run by The Staves

“I know I’ll see you again in the long run.” It’s a funny thing to feel about someone who I see every day and sleep next to every night. But that line jolted me to attention when I heard it, a little nugget of truth. I see Will constantly, but I don’t get to actively see him much at all these days. This is a sentiment I’ve heard from many friends who are at a similar life stage.

But rather than making me feel sad or like something has been lost, this song makes me feel on solid ground. “I know I’ll meet you again in the long run,” she sings. I like that idea, and I often feel that way. Ten years in, I can look across the dinner table, where our toddler has just dumped his plate onto the floor and yogurt is coming back out of the baby’s mouth, and I can catch Will’s eye for just a second, and we can both just know. The familiarity, the growing history together, the plunge we’ve taken with children, all of this brings a certain sense of confident knowing that life has many chapters, and we’ll meet again in a new way in a later one. Perhaps this will prove to be misplaced confidence, but I hope not.

Rather than struggling against our current reality, where we are often just brushing past each other, this song makes me feel ok about periods of distance. On this journey, we’ll see each other time and time again.

Stay With Me by Margaret Glaspy

I’ve loved this song for awhile, but when it popped up again recently, I immediately added it to my ten-year playlist, mostly because of the chorus:

Won’t you say with me? I’ll be on my best behavior.

When it all shakes down, who’s the clown and who’s the savior?

Me, you, me, you, me, you, me, you, me, you, me, you…

How many times have I thought or said something like this: Ugh, sorry, please stick around, I won’t do that shitty thing again.

I am constantly the clown, and so is he. We are both constantly the savior, especially with kids. And that’s how it works, just going round and round, clown, savior, clown, savior, clown, savior. This song is a lovely reminder that this is fine, wonderful even.

You’re Still The One cover by Lake Street Dive

This is the most classically lovey song on my list and not really representative of the rest of the set, but I love it for this moment. I chose it not because it’s usually how I feel—in the toddler-baby onslaught I rarely sit around and revel at Will being “the one.” But that’s the point of including this song: it’s aspirational and offers an invitation to zoom out.

“Looks like we made it...” the song begins. Indeed! It’s always true, in every single moment. Once in awhile it can feel good to celebrate that accomplishment with a 90’s love song.

And as an added bonus, this one offers a big, satisfying dose of nostalgia for anyone who grew up in the 90’s. And it has been improved from the original by Lake Street Dive’s newest vocalist Akie Bermiss. I saw him do it live and it was memorable.

Those are my picks! What song speaks to your current or recent romantic relationship? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

—Rachel