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Elton John and David Furnish Write Love Notes Every Saturday

An icon and hero to many, Sir Elton John celebrated his sixth wedding anniversary to David Furnish on Monday, December 21, 2020. The couple celebrated their 15-year milestone of their civil marriage on the same date.
John and Furnish provided intimate details of their commitment in Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue’s New York Times bestseller, “What Makes a Marriage Last.”
The couple met at a last-minute dinner party John hosted where he invited a handful of friends and their guests.
“The last thing on my mind was looking for someone to love,” John shared. “I just wanted to meet some new people.”
“I thought I would walk into this rock star’s house and meet a big ego,” Furnish said. “He didn’t want to talk about himself at all. He wanted to hear about our lives, our careers, our families, our interests, and our friends.”
John remembered meeting Furnish for the first time. “He was so intelligent. It was like ‘Oh, my God, an independent person!’”
The book also described John and Furnish’s celebration of love every Saturday of the year when they pay tribute to their fateful dinner party many years before with hand-written love notes. “That’s 52 love notes a year and since they started 26 years ago – 52 times 26 is 1,352 love notes,” the book stated.
“Prior to [the civil ceremony] we’d always said, ‘We don’t need a piece of paper to validate who we are,’ but I think we were a little naïve,” Furnish recalled. “There is something about having society validate your relationship.”
John agreed, “The civil partnership was moving, but the marriage was even more moving. I think it’s because we had the children [Zachary and Elijah] there.”
Having their children “brought us closer together,” Furnish said. ” We’d been independent adults for such a long time that the responsibility of raising a child meant we both hit the same learning curve at the same time.”
Both David and Furnish suffered from a history of substance abuse, although John’s was much farther along when they met. John recalled being 23 years sober when Furnish began his own sobriety journey.
“I just felt I wanted the clarity, particularly with the children. I thought, I’m not the person I used to be, and I wanted to hit the reset button,” Furnish recalled.
“I never had any doubt that this was an honest, lovely, kind, beautiful man. And I’ve never had anybody in my life like that before,” John said. “Even when he was drinking, we still had an open, honest relationship, and he came through on everything he said.”
“We’re both in AA now – we go to meetings together, which is really nice,” added Furnish.
John’s advice to young couples is straightforward.
“Learn about yourself before you give yourself,” John said. “Your own identity and your own self-worth are the greatest things you can bring to a relationship. If you don’t learn to love yourself, you can end up in a relationship with the wrong person.”
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