I asked my husband one day why he loves me. Most women have turned to the man in their life and asked this question at one point or another. Like most men, my husband typically sighs and makes his best effort at replying with what he thinks I am hoping to hear him say. This time he replied, “Because”. After thirteen years of togetherness and over eight of them being married, he is getting to the point of thinking that responding at all (to questions we both know are too deep for his male comfort level and any answer most likely too shallow for my female desire) is an acceptable response. I teasingly pressed him to expand on the very convincing “Because” he had offered. “But whyyyyy honey?” Wanting to sit in that comfortable couple’s silence and enjoy any type of televised rerun, he turned to me, looked me directly in the eye and said, “Because. You are my best friend.” Ahhhhhhh. Hard to argue for more with that one!!! The guy must actually be paying more attention than he gets credit for!
Of course, as women, we typically in our crazy, fairy-tale ridden, soap opera watching, romance novel reading, Lifetime television watching minds, desire to hear how beautiful we are, how our skin is like sensual satin to his touch, our lips like rose petals he could kiss forever, our eyes but mere windows to our souls, pools of depth and mystery. We want to hear how he could never live without us, how we hold together him and the lives we have built together and that it would crumble if anything were to ever, ever separate us. Alas, this is not frequently what we hear. And forget the foreign sexy accent and passionate breathless speaking! Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying men never step up to the plate and throw out a good one over a romantic dinner or interlude. Greeting cards were likely invented to help men out on important occasions. Also, I have a lot of great female friends, including myself, who enjoy a cold brew and carb-filled snacks while ESPN loudly fills the air with the season’s playoff game du’jour. Generally speaking we are different creatures with different desires. The communicating of our love for one another is frequently an area where it is hard to meet.
I am glad my husband loves me because I am his best friend. I know a lot of couples who do not share that type of relationship and we always wonder what the heck they are doing together. Love is a verb, an action word. Who the hell cares what romantic statements are left to the romance novels when I have a guy SHOWING me how he feels? Who else will wake up from a deep sleep and rub my back to ease pains from cramps or indigestion? Who else holds me and comforts me and assures me I am indeed not the crazy one when I’ve been victimized by family, friends, or the mean guy in line at the grocery store? Who else has helped me clean puke off the rug when our son thought the bucket of chicken was a serving size challenge? Who painted our bedroom before I had a major surgery so I could recover in a more aesthetically pleasing environment? Who cried with relief when the doctor’s didn’t find cancer during that same surgery? Who wanted me to have his baby so badly that he patiently waited over a decade until I was ready? My husband did, that’s who. We laugh together and fight together. We dream together and share disappointments as well as triumphs. He kisses me goodbye every morning before leaving for work and kisses me again when he comes home at night. We text message throughout the day and share our best “guess what happened…” stories for our daily reunion. When we have to be apart, we save the phone call for right before bed to share the day and be the last person to say goodnight to each other. How cool is it to get to do all the things we have to do in life with your best friend? As fun as it is to vacation together, win on a lottery ticket, go to dinner or the movies, watch our son play football or go to his first dance, be enthralled by our new baby or laugh at the new things she is exploring and learning ….those are the easy things to enjoy alone or with anyone.
Without a doubt, there is nobody I’d rather have by my side for the end of a bad day, the phone call you never want to get, a scary diagnosis from the doctor or any of the curve balls life throws our way that we’re never quite prepared for. My husband will probably never ask me why I love him, after all that would be a gate opener for a deep and meaningful discussion about our emotions, but if he ever did- I would tell him “Because. Because you are my best friend”.
Questions like this, Steph, are problematic for me. Because I'm not sure it's a domain that's particular apt for language, at least normal human discursive language. Look at the volumes and volumes of love poetry and sonnets that have been written trying to explain how and why the poet feels something. And, in the end, all you get is some analogies and metaphors for the writers feelings. You don't have access to the original experience. You never will. It's kind of like asking someone why it hurts if you cut yourself. You can answer with all sorts of physiological answers, describe the reaction of your nerves and brain cells. But in the end, have you gotten any closer to why it feels like it does? Why doesn't it feel like a burn? Or a tickle? You don't know, and explaining it someone else is hard enough, given that you can't explain it to yourself.
ReplyDeleteI agree Corey. That is why there are so many songs, poems, movies, and books about the subject of love! It is something that can be explained in so many ways and yet never fully explained at all. Asking someone why they love you is not a fair question in reality because how can one truly answer fully and accurately? How can one truly convey through verbage what strong emotions mean or have come to be?
ReplyDeleteI will always insist that love is a verb and subjective to individual experience! I will also insist that even the most minimal of efforts to express these mysterious and confusing emotions to our loved ones is never a waste of time or a failure! ;-)
not entirely certain that I want eros to become agape. Eros is selfish love, but it's selfish because one values the other so highly. That kind of selfishness I see as the ultimate compliment. The acknowledgement that the other is INDISPENSABLE.
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