cosmolinguist | So, there's that

In that way you get chatting during longish car rides, my co-worker A once asked me what I got out of my relationship with Andrew (having just asked me what I got out of my relationship with James (about which more later), so it was only fair).

I waffled a bit; it was a hard question to answer. I don't usually think of my marriage in terms of what I get out of it. But clearly I do get something out of it, or I wouldn't be here.

A noticed too how I was answering a different question than the one I was asked, and asked me again.

So I took a deep breath, and mentally stepped back from the descriptions of my marriage that I've got down pat, and thought about it.

I said, "I've never met anybody else so committed to my happiness."

And I'm so glad she gave me the chance to articulate that, because I've realizing the truth of it ever since.

While he cares greatly about many people, he takes a lot of the attention and affection that most people would share among many friends or acquaintances and aims it all at me: a beam of high-intensity, high-concentration, high-bandwidth love that is sometimes exasperating or even uncomfortable to be the recipient of but which also has seen me through the worst times in my life, in a way that no one else can have done (not least because our relationship goes back longer than any friendship I have -- much as I miss my high school and college friends, I've been adrift from them in recent years because I'm too weak to keep up the connections at a distance).

Andrew might tell you that all he did last night was wake up uncomplainingly in the wee hours to stroke my legs or hands and fetch chocolate and silly DVDs and lie behind me with his arm around me, giggling next to my ear even though he knows these jokes off by heart. But I'll tell you that (even when it doesn't work, even if I don't want him to be, even to his own detriment, even though I'm not as good at reciprocating, even when I wish he'd value other things more and this less) I am solemnly and overwhelmingly confident that my happiness is the most important thing to him.