A THOUGHT ON MARRIAGE

This morning, I remembered this thought on marriage that a beautiful woman wrote to me a while back... I want to love like this:

I hope that you don't ever give up on your idea of fairy tale love.  I don't think that it happens for everybody, but I do know that it *can* happen.  When I met my husband it was like the universe split apart and something reached out to me and touched me and just nodded, and that was it.  There was no doubt in my mind that he was the person that I wanted to be with forever.  But I also agree that thoughtlessness can kill any love and that you have to make the choice to love the person you're with every single day.  When I woke up yesterday morning, I immediately said to him, "It has been the greatest honor of my life just to know you and to be able to love you," and I meant it with every fiber of my being.  I think that you have to cultivate and maintain that deep, conscious level of respect.  I obviously don't always live up to the person that I want to be for Shane, but I try, and I think it's the willingness to keep trying that is the crux of any successful relationship.

One other note.  I think that life can be hard, and it can be cruel and dispiriting, so I want to be a soft place for him.  I want to be a source of endless support.  I let him know that I believe in him, that I adore him, that, to me, he's the most important person in the world.  Perhaps that sounds old-fashioned or even anti-feminist, but I don't think it's about gender at all, and besides, he does the same for me.  I think that when you find your partner, it's essentially your job to be their soft place in the world, similar to what you would be for a child.  Everybody needs that, even us grown-ups.