What Do You Want… from your Valentine?

So what if it’s a Hallmark Holiday? Every day should be St. Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate the ones you love.

Stories of the origin of St. Valentine’s Day are so varied that its clearly become the stuff of myths and legends, which is absolutely fine! It is said to celebrate an early martyr, two bishops, and other characters throughout early Roman history.

Who cares?

St. Valentine’s Day is just a great opportunity to do what we should be doing every day of the year, celebrating the ones we love. Most especially, the one we romantically (note the root of THAT word) love most. So, a discussion of what we want from our Valentine is a discussion of what we want most from our life partner, our soulmate, our truest beloved.

Start by Remembering That Your Valentine is a Human Being

When we first moved to where we now live, I noticed that many of the husbands were considerably older than their wives. It struck me as odd at first.

I later found out that most of those couples were third, fourth, and fifth marriages. This blew me away somewhat. Prior to coming here, I knew very few people who had married multiple times. One amusing exception were cousins who married three times… to each other.

This got me wondering why it was that my wife Karrie and I enjoy a relationship that has lasted more than 43 years. What was it that kept us together when others were trying over and over again to find “the right one.”

If you asked us, we could both list all the things we find annoying about each other. In fact, there’s more than one photograph out there depicting us taking sharp blades to each other. In most of them, we’re smiling. Most of them…

I know I’m a difficult person with very particular tastes and opinions, and so is Karrie. I’m not about to shine you on and tell you we never fight. I couldn’t tell you that without laughing out loud. When we fight, hoo boy, we fight. We both have razor sharp tongues and diabolical wit and when we turn them on each other its quite the spectacle.

But throughout the battles and the frustration and anger, one thing has always remained front-of-mind for both of us… we’re both human. We’re both likely to make mistakes. To get things wrong. To misunderstand. To misspeak. To forget stuff. Not her, but I can be lazy sometimes…

Remembering we’re human has helped us both get past the difficult times.

Defining the Investment

I used to say that marriage is an institution, and as with any institution you have to get yourself committed… committed to an institution.

It took me several years to realize how much I had invested in my relationship with Karrie. She’s one of those startlingly intelligent people who doesn’t quite know she’s so startlingly intelligent. But I know. And from that knowledge I soon realized she was the only person I could turn to when I needed to talk about something meaningful to me. There were and still are other friends I can talk to about many important issues, but there are some issues that only Karrie will ever hear about.

I’ve had several close brushes with death throughout my life and have more recently come to learn much about the Buddhist concept of embracing impermanence. Enjoy every moment while you can. As such, my relationship with fear has changed tremendously. There’s frankly very little I’m fearful of. Retirement is one. Spending every day doing not much scares me more than I can say. They’ll find me slumped over my keyboard someday.

But I absolutely fear what my life would be without my wife.

My wife is a major component of what keeps me going. I have no reservation about expressing how much I need her, to be with her, to spend every day looking at her and talking with her and just being together. Unlike many people I’ve met, I have a very clear definition of love and it comforts me and emboldens me.

And so, you’ll forgive me if I just don’t understand unfaithfulness and adultery. People close to me have had dalliances and affairs with people other than their spouses. Some express regret, but others are absolutely fine with bringing variety into their lives. And then there are those multiple marriages. I keep saying someone should explain “dating” to those people.

Look, I’m very good friends with some amazing, powerful women. I know many very beautiful women, who any man would find desirable. I cherish many of them as very dear friends. I consider myself extremely fortunate to count them among my friends.

But I cannot for the life of me understand why I would risk all that I have invested in my relationship with Karrie just to have sex with any of them. Sex is great, don’t get me wrong. But its most great when the love we share is part of it. Anything else would be inferior, and in any case it just wouldn’t be worth risking the loss of the amazing partnership I have enjoyed for all these years and want to continue enjoying for many years to come.

If that sounds sappy to you, that’s your problem.

Having No Illusions

I have no illusions about how amazingly fortunate I am.

In “Faust”, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe talks about losing the childhood dreams of perfection, in which we envision ourselves finding the perfect mate and building the perfect life together. It’s only as we reach adulthood that we begin to understand the extent to which we must be prepared to compromise on some things in order to achieve others

I suspect it’s the failure to recognize the importance of that balance that drives some people to demand perfection from their mates. That demand simply doesn’t align with the reality of human nature. We’re all flawed. It’s part of our charm.

What I want from my Valentine is really having everything I’ve described feeling for her in return. Reciprocal love. Reciprocal concern. Reciprocal desire to bring true happiness to each other. No expectation of perfection, just grateful acceptance of the excellence we enjoy together. Our union has produced decades of adventure, two truly remarkable sons, along with two remarkable grandsons, and for me the drive to fulfill my ambition to live a creative, productive life.

I truly couldn’t do it without her. And that’s exactly what I want from my Valentine.

How about you?