Monikers are gone in bold step for Brad

Images of Eva Bradley for APN Regional Newspapers stock

IN MORE than a decade of being a columnist, I have used a lot of words - 600 a week ... 31,000 per year ... close to 400,000 in total.

It is safe to say that few words have escaped my clutches, and vast swathes have been used many times over.

But there is one word that has never been used before and, with the exception of this one day in history, will never be used again. It is a word that means nothing to almost everyone, but almost everything to me.

That word is "Brad".

Brad has had many other names in these column inches. His first nom de plume about four years ago was simply "a guy from down the way". Despite his reluctance at the time to be anything more than a casual cameo in my life, he took great offence to my equally casual description in the newspaper, especially when teamed with the phrase "seeing a bit of".

A few months later the guy from down the way came to be known as my boyfriend, which kind of made me feel like I was in high school again, but was preferable to that other great moniker of the 21st century - the "partner".

About a year ago, after a very romantic and unexpected proposal, my boyfriend officially acquired the name "fiance", but the title never stuck, seeming as it did to reveal far more about my private life than I often felt like sharing in passing conversation.

Today, the former "guy from down the way" gets the designation "husband", which is a word neither of us could have imagined applying when first introduced at a Labour Party fundraising auction in 2011 (yes, folks, despite what the lefties like to say about me, I was indeed there, and I even briefly gave them my vote in lieu of hooking me up with Mr Right ... no pun intended).

Since it is such a monumental day and Brad's new title is an equally significant one, I was given a one-off hall pass to use his name - something I was banned from doing the moment he realised I made a living from talking about my life and those who were involved in it.

Of course being banned from using his name did not mean I was banned from making reference to him, thus the plethora of substitutes, most recent of which has been "Baby Daddy" - a role that has revealed him as his best self yet.

Brad, like his progression of names, has become better and more significant the longer I have known him.

While bit-part players in my past have made a resounding first impression and then quickly gone downhill from there, Brad has proved quite the opposite, becoming more amazing to me the longer I have known him. Not one for flamboyant or frequent displays of emotion or romance, when he does proffer them they are unequalled in sincerity and plain old-fashioned wow factor.

Unlike me, you'll never catch him reading literature or dropping lines from Shakespeare into conversation, but he will quote from American Gangster and tell you that the loudest man in the room is the weakest man in the room.

When I met Brad, I wondered if it would be a problem that in contrast to me, he wasn't a great talker. I have learned in recent years that it is true what they say about actions speaking louder than them.

-Eva Bradley is a columnist and photographer, who runs Napier-based Eva Bradley Photography.