Unromantic Love Letter
Love is a decision and relationship is a choice.
This phrase struck me on a deeper level after reading a copy of a love letter sent to me by a colleague.
Take the time to read it. I guarantee you will look at your relationship in a different light.
Happy Anniversary – The World’s Most Unromantic Love Letter
By Bonnie Alger, September 16, 2010
Todd and I have been married for 10 years today. While that is a nice round number most people will recognize as a minor accomplishment, it is probably worth noting that we have been married for 3,650 days or 5,256,000 minutes or 315,360,000 seconds.
I could say, “Love ya honey!” Here’s to another 10 great ones. But that would be disingenuous, first because I have never used the endearment “honey” and secondly because those 10 years haven’t been all that great. The expected thing might be to say that even the bad times have been good, but it’s not true. The bad times suck.
At 10 years some couples might revisit their vows. Remember the vows we said. I wanted to get them EXACTLY RIGHT. I can’t even remember them now. It was all garbage. Because it doesn’t matter what we said on a perfect day, wearing the perfect white dress, on a perfect green lawn.
What matters is what gets said in the middle of the night, when the baby has been screaming for 10 straight hours. At the airport just before one of us is shipped off to the other side of the world. At the moment when your mother dies. When the checking account is overdrawn. When we are pregnant again for the 11th month in a row. When the doctor tells me I have a mass in my lung. At the moment each of us thought the other was picking up a child from school.
Every one of those 315 million, 360 thousand seconds have presented us with a choice – at times quite difficult – to stay or to go.
Today, the course of our marriage has been complicated, and the marriage we have today looks nothing like the fairy-tale we both imagined on that fairy-tale wedding day. We have wandered off course again and again. At times I look at the path of our marriage and say to myself that I can not take another step.
But you are a simple course. Loyal, steady and true. You are the calm waters in the storm, my oasis in the desert. These are the reasons I chose you for 315,360,000 seconds.
What I say now, on our anniversary, is as meaningless and arbitrary as our vows. It is just another day, 86,400 more choices. But in case you didn’t hear it now over all the yelling in those difficult moments (especially when the checking account is overdrawn) I will say it again now:
You are my course: I choose you.
Tags: Communication, Crisis, Love
This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 12:00 PM and is filed under IMAGO and Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
