Actor Jim Parsons went deep with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, explaining what it felt like to be a gay man in a relationship for 15 years and to finally get married to his husband Todd.

Said Parsons:

“I didn’t really think we cared about the act of it that much, to be honest with you. And that sounds cold in a way, but I finally thought…well, let’s have a party then for the celebration of, and we’ll go ahead and legalize this thing. And I really thought it would kind of end at that, a party feel but it was so much more meaningful in the moment to me than I predicted. And it’s been resonantly more meaningful to me afterward than I ever saw coming. I’d been an adult gay person for so long at a time when that wasn’t possible that life was ‘fine,’ you know what I mean?”

He tried to explain how being married legally was different than just being partnered:

“There is an underlying thing a little buzz of something. I keep reminding myself of it. I kind of forget, and then I’m like, ‘we’re a legal thing, just like mom and dad were.'”

And then he explained how he felt when he knew Todd was the one:

“There’s this sense of divinity, to be in love, to find love in that way is as close as anything else I can imagine doing that gives me the feeling of being close to God or whatever that is for you. And there’s a sensation. When we first got together I remember lying in bed and closing my eyes and but not being asleep and that sensation of ‘light, light, light,’ and I was like ‘oh, I don’t know what’s going on exactly’ but it feels close to something important, eternal…”

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