If you could pick a Sliding Doors moment, i.e., go back to one point in your life and see how things would have played differently if you’d missed that train, when and where would it be?

I made a list like this once but it was all about career choices — if I’d stuck to doing politics, if I’d moved to LA at 22 and tried to get a job in TV then. But beyond job ladder what-ifs, it’s kind of a scarier question now. I don’t want to imagine an alternate future without Jessica!

I do, though, wonder what might have happened if she and I had met earlier. We both moved to LA in 2004. We had mutual friends by 2005. I could have gone to Halloween in West Hollywood with Chris that year and met Jessica then. Instead we didn’t meet till mid-2007, and didn’t go on a date until six months later.

I know a lot of why we had such an easy, suddenly-so-serious relationship was not whatever u-haul stereotype (not really either of our style) but because we were old enough to have each basically gotten our shit together separately. We were both over the idea of finding drama or self-destruction romantic; at the same time we were both keenly aware that happiness could be fleeting and it was worth the risk to try. If we’d met two years earlier I’m not totally sure I would have been ready or it would have been so easy. Theoretically, sure, I would want two more years of us together, because I’m a greedy newlywed bride and I want an eternity.

But in this case I missed the metaphorical train, that first (of probably many) chances to find Jessica — and I found her anyway, and it was definitely the right time then. It’s the best luck I’ve ever had in my life, and the best evidence of fate I’ve had, too.

ask me anything