Long Relationships

Today we have a special guest post. My husband decided to surprise me and sent this to me last night. Enjoy.

A Woman of My Own
By Mr. JM

With little success, I had spent my life wishing for and sometimes daydreaming of, finding a partner in life. I had a few expectations – she would be intelligent, we would be able to talk about many things and she would walk beside me; neither a pace behind nor a pace in front. The last was, of course, a metaphor for what kind of person she would be – I wanted neither meek ‘little woman’ nor rabid feminist for a wife, I wanted a true partner.

After years of trying, and failing, I gave up on the idea. I had tried too many times without success for me not to know that the problem was me. Too many women, of a whole range of types, had proved not to be my partner. The problem was in me; either I wasn’t suitable for the role for which I dearly wished, or I was choosing the wrong types. Either way, the ongoing hurt caused by multiple failures left me unable to contemplate continuing the search.

I spent some time coming to terms with this. I worked my way through the pain of realizing I was destined to be alone, forseeing the time when I would grow old, alone, and working on being able to accept that this was who I would be. I decided the one thing I would work on was to never become the old nutter up the road whom all kids feared.

Time passed and life moved on. I got involved with some writing on an internet site. That site kind of died a death and I found another. On the new site I found some troubled young people and I reached out to offer what help I could.

One in particular stood out when I ‘spoke’ to her. I found myself following her posts on the forums, intrigued by the way they seemed to show a ‘glow’ from her. I puzzled for some time over it as it seemed I was somehow getting more than I should from mere words on a screen.

She was troubled; life had not been easy nor had she found much in the way of support systems and I could sense her pain sometimes in the confusion she had about the world.

I reached out even though, in my own life, I was slowly recovering from a trauma of my own. I found I could talk to her as I had been able to talk to few people in my life. She was bright, articulate and intelligent. We were in love.

There is an age difference which, although it didn’t matter to her, concerned me a lot. I might have stepped away from involvement but for her being wiser than I. She was right, age was not a barrier unless we (read I) made it so.

I can’t say it was an easy path. The internet was the way we met and we were both pretty much the people we showed on the web, but there was another who gained our trust and then tried to mess with our heads. Almost she succeeded; almost we allowed her machinations to part us and hurt us and cause us to hurt each other. But we didn’t. Eventually we saw through the liar’s actions.

My woman was still in a troubled life. It got worse even as we grew closer. Plans we’d made to wait for particular milestones had to be scrapped and we made arrangements for her to come to Australia. I don’t recall ever having been so impressed as I was by her act of courage when she got on a plane to fly 12,000 miles to meet a man she knew only online.

Many people have crappy lives, many people live in pain or unhappiness, but how many will act in faith to the extent my love did? How many people will take their first flight, with all the knowledge that there are predators out there, to a place both alien and so far from anything they know, and knowing that there would be no easy path back home, nor probably a home to which they could return?

My wife is a person who doubts herself, who has fears which I will probably never understand fully, yet who trusts me, who needs me and who I am proud to have by my side. She is facing up to her past, making her present and building a path to a future she never thought could be hers.

I wanted a partner all those years and I finally found her. But I got so much more; I got someone to renew my life, to help me rebuild my hope and for whom I need to be a better person. I found love.