maydecnc

Every so often I get curious about people I’ve met in my single days. I don’t think anyone is immune to that sort of curiosity, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad if you do (or don’t!) have that curiosity. What is neat about it is that you can look back at that time in your life and come away with a greater appreciation for what you have now, even if what you have now is not perfect.

Today I searched for my last LTR on Facebook, and to my surprise, I found this person. It surprised me on a couple of levels. First of all, this person strongly disapproved of my interest in all things virtual, so to see this person have a Facebook profile was a little shocking, a little hypocritical. What surprised me more was my physical reaction to seeing the face of this person. (For those of you not on Facebook, you can search a person’s name and see his or her profile picture (if he/she has posted one), along with his/her name and a link to “request friend(ship)”.) I felt a wave of nausea wash over me from head to toe. Needless to say, I did not request friendship with this person, and I fervently hope this person doesn’t request friendship of me at any point in the future.

For about an hour, I debated whether to tell my spouse what I’d done. Then, I decided that the whole experience could be spun in such a way so that he would know how much I appreciate being with him in spite of “the difficulties of life” these past two years. He was out-of-town on business today, so I called to tell him this and that I was glad I was with him (and not the other guy). I could tell he was surprised, but happily so.

When you’ve been married for years, you tend to experience more of the “real life” the minister mentions in the ceremony but that you think will never, ever happen to you. It seems (to me, anyways) to be more work to be loving and expressive. Love seems to become more about ethics and responsibility than romance. Even so, it is good to look for the positive - whereever you can find it - and share it with your spouse.

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