My wife is my friend. She must love me to put up with me the way she does. Some of the reasons I KNOW she loves me is that she shows it in everything she says and does. It's not just her telling me all the time. She tells other people that she loves me. I hear about her bragging about me to her friends and she builds me up when I'm not around. Am I worthy of all that praise? Absolutely not, but she's a smart girl and knows that kind of actions will be reciprocated. She knows me well enough to know that I'll try as hard as I can to be deserving of the accolades she heaps on me. She knows that I want to deserve the good treatment I get so we're constantly trying to outdo each other with goodness.
Sometimes, I hear friends or even family complaining about their spouses. All people love love attention. Most people have learned that a good/easy way to get attention is to have a sob story worse than their audience so they'll "earn" attention in the form of pity. (for lack of a better definition)
This breaks my heart when I see and hear of this. It's unproductive in a relationship and just as damaging to the individual. We live in a society that tells us that if we don't' take care of ourselves then nobody else will. I hear this vocalized verbatim often as well. If people really believe this, then why would ANYONE ever get married? That's a horrible thing to think and a deplorable way to act.
After 13 years of marriage, I still look forward to coming home to my wife from work. We spend almost every waking minute together on the weekends and on some weekdays when I work from home and we never get tired of each other. We still hold hands when we go out in public and when we ride in the car together. We still snuggle on the couch when watching movies or even in the movie theater.
She works and only shops for sale items. Even though she works, she STILL keeps a clean house, cooks our meals at home, does dishes, laundry, and never complains. How could I possible EVER be deserving of that?
This is one of the things that really scares me about having kids one day. I've been so spoiled and have been the center of attention that it's been easy for us to lavish attention on each other. Once kids come, there will be a new set of priorities to deal with and I'm not sure how I'll handle that. I've seen other friends of ours that were affectionate couples (pre-parenthood) become just a mommy and daddy to their kids and it doesn't seem like they have much of a relationship with each other anymore. Hopefully, it's not as gloomy as it seems. I'm sure there's more to it than I'm seeing.
Either way, I sure do enjoy what we've had and what we still have now. Really makes me wonder why people think marriage is so hard. It really isn't as long as you put your mate first.
