Are you ready? The following is why I married my wife. It took a while to decide and like I have said a few times before, finding my wife was one of the most deliberate endeavors I have ever done. It sounds so heartless and without emotion, but that is far from the truth.
It all started back when I was a teen and I was looking to have a girlfriend. But, I was "That Guy." Even though I struck out in the friend zone all the time, I paid attention to those around me and really developed what I thought a relationship should look like. You know as well as I do that there is no shortage of examples in high school to draw upon to develop what you like and don't like when it comes to finding a parner.
So, here is where I started to develop my sense of what I wanted. I hated to see verbally abusive relationships. It ground my gears to hear them say they were in love and the turn around and insult or be hateful to each other. Seriously, people! That's not love, eh? It really bugged me seeing the on-and-off relationship where they would break up and then get back together all the time. I called them trampolines. Then of course you have the manipulative ones where one or the other played brain games.... I guess now they now called it gaslighting. Whatever. It has been around forever no matter what name you give it. And, holy crap is that a messed up type of relationship!
I saw all that and more and I filed it away in my mind to remember for when I eventually broke that irritating Friend Zone curse. Don't get me wrong, I dated a few times but being the type of guy that was friend-zoned all the time and being a huge introvert, it was not like I was a lion in a pride of lionesses. You know? It was more like a pin ball just bumping into people and sometimes they held on for a moment or two and then kicked back out into the game again.
I was really cautious too. I saw and learned a lot from my siblings and their boyfriends and girlfriends. Holy crap were some of them messed up! I didn't agree with some of the things my sisters did like how many partners they had as I was growing up but that was just my thing. I was not going to do that..... Not that girls were beating down my door anyway. My brother was gaslighted and manipulated for most of his high school years. No way for me! I knew one thing very early on - I was too sensitive and emotional to get serious too fast. Emotionally I knew I would not be able to handle the heartbreak.
So here it is. After much time, awkwardness, and being weird, the following is why I married my wife.
I will start with the first time I met her. We were at a coffee social that was put on by the residence assistant to promote community in the dorm I was staying. I remember going and seeing her there. The very first thing I noticed was her smile. It was instant infatuation. Dang! I saw it and thought, I love this smile! Then she asked me something, I really don't know what it was but I thought that I had to see if I could get her to smile at me some more! We started to talk. I found out how intelligent she was and that she was going to be a teacher like I was. I could feel the drive in her and the goals she had set for herself. It drew me in more to her. I was definitely interested. And that smile..... did I say she had a great smile?
We ended up talking the night away to like 4 in the morning. It was hours and hours of just getting to know each other. Then I asked if she would be going to a meeting the next day that I was going to and asked if I could take her. Then we talked of going to a coffee house and then a movie and then we started to hang out together as much as we could. I really enjoyed that we talked so easily and never really ran out of stuff to talk about.
After that, I had to know about her family. It was important to me that her family and I got along. The first meeting of her family was dropped on me when they decided to drop by about a two weeks after we met. I was seeing her every day at least in passing by that time. Well, she just dropped by with them at my door way one day and we talked in the hallway for a while. Then I visited them for a couple of days for the spring break and knew that she had really great parents. Her dad reminded me of my Grandpa.
After about a six months, we had grown in our relationship to lay bare our most hidden thoughts and some feelings or things that we have done that we were not -proud of. Let me tell you, if you feel that some one is laying bare their soul with something that they are ashamed of or it eats away at their insides, it is critical that you respond with empathy, reassurance, and with compassion. And that means no matter how trivial that whole thing is to you.
She said that she was in a hard relationship before me that she thought would be "The ONE." Well, there was a day where she thought she was pregnant and had a scare. It turned out that she was not. To me that is trivial. She wasn't pregnant so no harm - no foul. But to her, this was a very emotional rollercoaster to her because to her the possibility of becoming pregnant when she was not ready reflected on who she was and how responsible she was and things like that. To me it was not a big deal, people have pregnancy scares all the time. To her, is was a very personal reflection of who she was and what her morals were. Trust me, that was important to how I approach that part of our relationship. This was the time when she also started to let go of the fear left by that crippling relationship experience (he eventually cheated on her and got another girl pregnant) and started to get closer to me. And I did the same to her.
As time went on we had struggles and emergencies that just come with life. Going to the hospital, and broken down cars, and money problems, and job problems, and school stress, and a host of other things. I found that she was very good with advice and thinking ahead. She managed stress horribly but looked to find solutions instead of blame. We made plans of attack with the best of our knowledge and our best wisdom at the time and she stood by me and I stood by her to get things straightened out. I developed a trust for her that went deep and I believe that she did too.
Then about a year into our relationship we started to talk "business" of becoming even more involved. We started to talk about what our idea of marriage was and it was not all love and hallmark movie. We talked about things like how many children we would like and what church we would go to and where we would live if we got married and where we would like to work and how we would manage money and save for retirement. Stuff like that. In the end, love is truly not enough no matter what the romantics say. Love drives the will to make life easier for both of you.
That's about the time I had cemented in my mind that I was ready to pray about marrying this girl and asking her to be my wife.
There was still more though. I still needed to see how she talked about being a wife. I still needed time to hear how she reacted to what she saw others do in their relationship and how spoke of other people and what they did. That, to me, says a lot about her deep inside feelings of commitment and how she would act and be in our marriage. What I saw and heard and experience was making me fall even deeper.
The last and most important part of knowing if my wife was the one for me has to do with feeling, emotions, and well being. It started on that first night when I caught a glance of her smile. The feelings I had then! Seriously. I was hooked and infatuated like hell. I am not kidding when I say that love is not enough. But love is the fuel. I loved to listen to my wife talk about her future job and her ideas. Her voice goes up and she speaks with enthusiasm and her eyes light up with her excitement. I loved to hear and watch to her with babies. I craved to know what she thought and how she saw what is happening. I enjoyed bragging on her because I truly believe that she is one of the most intelligent people I know. I found comfort in knowing that she will stay with me and will be faithful. I don't worry about it or feel the need to be jealous. I don't have to defend it at all. I just know. She shows me all the time with her words and notes, and little gifts, and the time she spends with me, and the places she wants to take me and the hugs and kisses and cuddling and all the other things she does. Most of all, I loved how just her mere touch makes my whole being relax and let go of all the toxic feelings I have. I don't worry as much. I let go of anxiety. I let go of anger. I let go of sadness. I become calm and peaceful. She centers me and helped me to just be in touch with being. It is deep and I look at what I have just written and it seems so pitiful and dull to what it really felt like.
And to this very day, it is all the same but more intense. You know?
And that is when I decided to pop the question. It was just the two of us. I didn't want fan fair or a big show. I wanted it to be just us because in my mind our marriage would be just us and this moment was sacred and intimate. It was a moment for just us to experience with no one to put their spin or influence on it. And I asked her. And she said yes, and I think that my heart exploded and melted all at the same time. It was truly the beginning of an endless happiness for me.
This is really a pathetic and crazy pale description to how I really feel about why I married my wife and to this day am more in love with her than ever. but, here it is because you ask me why.
