Taryn wears the Sparkling Halo Tennis Bracelet and the Pandora Moments Heart T-Bar Snake Chain Bracelet. Sasha wears the Pandora Moments Studded Chain Necklace, and Sparkling Asymmetric Wave Ring Set rings.
I knew Sasha was my partner for life pretty early on. We initially met through a friend, and then we met properly when I took over the lease on a flat Sasha was moving out of in Auckland. My initial impressions were that she was strikingly beautiful and quite shy and awkward. Before we started officially dating, Sasha says she made up an excuse to email me, being that as I had taken over her flat in Auckland, she felt she should let me know she had changed her mailing address so I could expect to stop receiving her mail….. on that thread we had over 100 emails back and forth and the chemistry grew from there.
Our first proper date was at Depot in Auckland and it ended up being quite a wild night dining and clubbing until the wee hours of the morning. This is the same night Sasha asked me to be her girlfriend. Sasha had been relatively in the ‘closet’ about her sexuality around this time and when I said yes to going out with her, I told her I wasn’t willing to go back ‘in the closet’ so she’d have to come out properly. Fast forward a couple of months, I was working as a publicist and late one evening at the office, I got a call from a journalist asking me if I would be willing to comment on the proposed Marriage Amendment Act. I didn’t think too much about it, so I gave a short comment and photo and continued on working. Twelve hours later Sasha is walking into Middlemore hospital to start her shift [as a doctor] and as she walked in there was us on the cover of the New Zealand Herald. Our faces were plastered all over the front page and online with a headline which definitely told the world that we were big old gays. That is how I accidentally extremely publicly outed Sasha!
We spent the first years of our relationship having a lot of fun – we were very in love and spent a lot of time together, working out, dining out, laughing a lot (definitely a favourite activity of ours) and getting a lot more sleep than we currently do. We chose to move in together after dating for a year and we also got engaged shortly after!
Our wedding [in 2014] was the best party I’ve ever been to, still even to this day. We had a cocktail party at The Roxy in Fort Lane which was an incredible venue. Coming off the back of the Marriage Amendment Act being passed there was an electric energy at our wedding, it was most people’s first same sex wedding! Highlights include, our friend Anika Moa singing us down the aisle to Beyonce’s ‘Love On Top’, seeing our friends and family of all ages tearing up the dance floor until the wee hours of the morning (our friend DJ SirVere was on the decks and he was insanely amazing) and leaving legally married.
Our relationship has changed so much over the past decade. We always say we have grown up together as we got together in our early twenties. What I love about us is that we share the same values and neither of us are too proud to look at ourselves and see where we need to grow. Practically speaking we have a lot less time to ourselves and to spend together since we have young children, but like in our early days, we still prioritise health, wellbeing and togetherness. We love to work out together, we enjoy trying out new restaurants, we love getting outdoors and we spend a lot of time marvelling at our beautiful kids!
Having children has been the greatest privilege and it’s not something we take lightly given the hoops we have had to jump through to have them. We spent a significant amount of time finding a donor and in 2016 we welcomed our son Miha into the world. We completed our family with the addition of our daughter Maja who was born this year. They definitely bring out the very best in us and at times have revealed the worst, especially under the conditions of sleep deprivation and juggling full time careers and the pressures of big lives. That all said, our kids have absolutely grown and deepened our love and respect for each other. We also spend the evenings once the kids have gone to bed, talking and often laughing together. I find that time in the evening really unifies us and resets us after what is always a big day!
We approach the world quite differently but we balance each other out and we like to learn from each other. We’re both deeply committed to learning – I think this is why we’ve stuck together for so long! My favourite things about Sasha include the way she looks. I find her incredibly beautiful and I love staring at her great face. She also has a freakishly brilliant brain, I call her ‘Google brain’ for her ability to retain a lot of super complex information and random facts and reflections. I also love that she is deeply honest, hardworking and loyal. She says those qualities make her sound boring, and I always refute that, saying those qualities are becoming rarer by the day in people.
We’ve certainly had our challenges and the biggest one was with the passing of my beautiful younger sister. My sister had been sick on and off with two different cancers since she was 4 years old and she died at 26 years old. I fell apart when she died. I had to change a lot of things to heal, this saw me leaving a job I loved and confronting some hard stuff. The reality of this deep grief is that it can be ugly and a wild journey. It became very clear that we lacked a lot of tools during this time to know how to communicate and navigate such turbulence – this was a catalyst for us both starting therapy, together and as individuals. It was really hard and at times it felt like we wouldn’t be able to withstand the weight of it all. This really revealed the depth of our strength and commitment to each other and it reminded me why I always knew I could marry Sasha, being the quality of not being afraid to dig deep and to commit to learning. Ultimately, we’ve had to keep choosing each other over and over. I think that’s key.
Photography by Mike Rooke
Makeup by Kiekie Stanners from Loser Kid.
Get the look from Pandora
Pandora Moments Heart T-Bar Snake Chain Bracelet, $119 (above), Sparkling Asymmetric Wave Ring Set, $198 (top right), and Pandora Moments Studded Chain Necklace, $229 (right).
