As I often tell my coaching clients, they’re looking for the second best man on the planet, because I’m married to the best one. They always laugh.
I mean it.
When Craig and I got married (a second marriage for us both), he made me a promise that has had a huge, and very positive, impact on our relationship. He swore to always have men in his life, and to never try to get from me what he should be getting from them.
What that has meant is that for every challenging thing that has come up for him (or for me, or for us) over the 27 years that we’ve been together, he has had a place to go where he didn’t have to be stoic or strong for my sake, or try to suppress his negative emotions because I might not be able to handle whatever was going to come up/out.
It’s given us so much freedom in our relationship, as strange as that may sound to some people. There’s a widely-held belief that your life partner is supposed to be your “everything”, and that is just flat-out not true. And the pressure to try to be that can cause resentment, fear, distance … and maybe even worse.
I love that my husband has access to the full range of expression as a man and as a human being.
He plays full out, everywhere. And that is very sexy.