6 ms·

> It’s hard to accept the possibility that Judy may have completely forgotten about me, but a lifetime of living with disability has shown me how delicate human

> It’s hard to accept the possibility that Judy may have completely forgotten about me, but a lifetime of living with disability has shown me how delicate human bodies and minds can be, how little it can take to dramatically, traumatically alter—or end—lives. Two rogue bones in my neck. Plaque on my beloved’s brain. Great love stories begin with such heady promise and end with such sadness and grief—but, at least in my case, also with memories of immense joy throughout a muscular marriage of two strong, supportive partners with challenges aplenty. So poignantly expressed. I am usually skeptical of 'true love', but these kind of stories remind me I could be so utterly wrong. It is rare to find people as committed to each other as Judy & Steve.

S_A_P 5y ago
True love is something that takes work. Sure some people mesh better than others, and if you picked your mate mostly on aesthetics you may realize that having someone you like to look at is not the way to sustain a multi decade relationship. I think when it comes to a partner, you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be either. The flipside of course is that your partner should feel the same way and be willing to endure your ups and downs
- wnolens 5y ago
  > you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be Wise, thanks. That very concisely captures what I've been coming around to understanding about having relationships with anyone. I've had it easy with best friends that were so similar (because we grew up together), but life is long(ish) and people change and grow apart. Even if you have a a relationship that is on easy-mode, it will change for a sufficiently long time-horizon (marriage).
- bmj 5y ago
  The Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas put it this way: When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.
  - hahajk 5y ago
    I had a girlfriend in high school/college for four years; I’ve been with my wife for over 15. Looking back on my high school relationship I can say I was in love, if I know anything about love from my marriage. The same feelings of interdependency and shared identity. It’s popular to look at young people and think they can’t know love but my experience says that’s not true.
    - azekai 5y ago
      I had a friend in high school whose romantic feelings were just absurdly powerful. Romeo never pined for Juliet the way my buddy Michael felt for his girlfriend. But at the risk of sounding trite, hormones =/= sacrifice, which is the real, meaningful expression of love. I don't want to lessen the importance of your earlier relationship, but puppy dog love is the easiest and most short-lived of affections.
pomian 5y ago
I do not believe it is rare. I think that it is the same with bad news and tragedy, the news reports only those. Behind all the sad stories, the frustrated stories, and everything else that is loud, there is a quiet passion that supports the world. It quietly goes on, without disturbing the neighbors, or making headlines. It's not easy, it's not painful, but it perseveres. All around you. In the background.
- jborichevskiy 5y ago
  Beautifully put :) the background radiation of love
- rxhernandez 5y ago
  I think the divorce rate starkly points in a different direction.
  - NineStarPoint 5y ago
    There is no doubt that bad marriages are common. That doesn't mean that true love is rare though. The question of how many of the marriages that do stay together are good marriages is somewhat separate.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mediaman 5y ago
    The divorce rate is distorted because of those who have many divorces. It's split, also, across class lines. Marriages between college-educated people are only about 30% likely to end in divorce.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  I have heard about a man who remained unmarried his whole life, and when he was dying, ninety years old, somebody asked him, “You have remained unmarried your whole life, but you have never said what the reason was. Now you are dying, at least quench our curiosity. If there is any secret, now you can tell it, because you are dying; you will be gone. Even if the secret is known, it can’t harm you.” The man said, “Yes, there is a secret. It is not that I am against marriage, but I was searching for a perfect woman. I searched and searched, and my whole life slipped by.” The inquirer asked, “But upon this big earth, so many millions of people, half of them women, couldn’t you find one perfect woman?” A tear rolled down from the eye of the dying man. He said, “Yes, I did find one.” The inquirer was absolutely shocked. He said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?” And the old man said, “But the woman was searching for a perfect husband.” Osho – The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
nefitty 5y ago
I love my wife a lot. She's like my shadow, evidence that the sun is in the sky. If she got really sick I would stay with her and care for her. A huge chunk of that is because I'm attached to her, the little human pattern that the universe mumbles out. The other mind that looks at me and convinces me I actually exist. I personally think it's irresponsible to set up these weird transcendental expectations. If anyone reading this has yet to fall in love or be in a long term relationship, it's all flowery and cute and lovey at first and then one day you fart for the first time in front of her. There's like, non-subjectively evident demands that you agree to impose on yourself when becoming a union. Physical. Social. Emotional. I would not leave my wife if her mind was gone. Besides my irrational human attachment, I can't imagine putting my family, her family, our friends, through the experience of seeing her be abandoned by her life partner. Of having them experience evil unmask itself through the act of relegating her to a meat body, which we all are. I don't know why I felt such a strong urge to express my cynicism. I don't believe in souls, I guess is part of it. I also don't like when people get hyped into expecting the universe from others. My wife loves me deeply, I feel it when she randomly puts her head on my shoulder or I catch her staring at me. She would also yell at me in embarrassment if I farted loudly next to her at the grocery store.
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Very well put. My remark about 'true love' was this exact cynicism. And like you, I mirror the exact same feelings for my wife. The Mills & Boone type of romances do not exist in real life. Deep love is crafted incrementally each day of being together, like an old oak tree sinking its roots ever deeper. It is perhaps the gravitas and wordsmanship which makes the author's story remarkable. It exposed us to his thought process, and the minutaé of his feelings. As a thinking species, we perhaps appreciate this expressivity. These adversities are more common than depicted & many couples with disabilities do share meaningful time together.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Yes for sure. I hope I did not diminish those experiences. It is really awesome to be in love. I understand its sway. I appreciate how we almost reflexively communicate about those emotions in bits of poetry. They splay out in so many directions, it's like we're picking fruits from an orchard and showing each other what we discover. It's really nice to get to be in the orchard.
spoonjim 5y ago
True love exists, but it’s something that’s made, not found.

S_A_P 5y ago

True love is something that takes work. Sure some people mesh better than others, and if you picked your mate mostly on aesthetics you may realize that having someone you like to look at is not the way to sustain a multi decade relationship. I think when it comes to a partner, you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be either. The flipside of course is that your partner should feel the same way and be willing to endure your ups and downs

wnolens 5y ago
> you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be Wise, thanks. That very concisely captures what I've been coming around to understanding about having relationships with anyone. I've had it easy with best friends that were so similar (because we grew up together), but life is long(ish) and people change and grow apart. Even if you have a a relationship that is on easy-mode, it will change for a sufficiently long time-horizon (marriage).
bmj 5y ago
The Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas put it this way: When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.
- hahajk 5y ago
  I had a girlfriend in high school/college for four years; I’ve been with my wife for over 15. Looking back on my high school relationship I can say I was in love, if I know anything about love from my marriage. The same feelings of interdependency and shared identity. It’s popular to look at young people and think they can’t know love but my experience says that’s not true.
  - azekai 5y ago
    I had a friend in high school whose romantic feelings were just absurdly powerful. Romeo never pined for Juliet the way my buddy Michael felt for his girlfriend. But at the risk of sounding trite, hormones =/= sacrifice, which is the real, meaningful expression of love. I don't want to lessen the importance of your earlier relationship, but puppy dog love is the easiest and most short-lived of affections.

pomian 5y ago

I do not believe it is rare. I think that it is the same with bad news and tragedy, the news reports only those. Behind all the sad stories, the frustrated stories, and everything else that is loud, there is a quiet passion that supports the world. It quietly goes on, without disturbing the neighbors, or making headlines. It's not easy, it's not painful, but it perseveres. All around you. In the background.

jborichevskiy 5y ago
Beautifully put :) the background radiation of love
rxhernandez 5y ago
I think the divorce rate starkly points in a different direction.
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  There is no doubt that bad marriages are common. That doesn't mean that true love is rare though. The question of how many of the marriages that do stay together are good marriages is somewhat separate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mediaman 5y ago
  The divorce rate is distorted because of those who have many divorces. It's split, also, across class lines. Marriages between college-educated people are only about 30% likely to end in divorce.
dijonman2 5y ago
I have heard about a man who remained unmarried his whole life, and when he was dying, ninety years old, somebody asked him, “You have remained unmarried your whole life, but you have never said what the reason was. Now you are dying, at least quench our curiosity. If there is any secret, now you can tell it, because you are dying; you will be gone. Even if the secret is known, it can’t harm you.” The man said, “Yes, there is a secret. It is not that I am against marriage, but I was searching for a perfect woman. I searched and searched, and my whole life slipped by.” The inquirer asked, “But upon this big earth, so many millions of people, half of them women, couldn’t you find one perfect woman?” A tear rolled down from the eye of the dying man. He said, “Yes, I did find one.” The inquirer was absolutely shocked. He said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?” And the old man said, “But the woman was searching for a perfect husband.” Osho – The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha

nefitty 5y ago

I love my wife a lot. She's like my shadow, evidence that the sun is in the sky. If she got really sick I would stay with her and care for her. A huge chunk of that is because I'm attached to her, the little human pattern that the universe mumbles out. The other mind that looks at me and convinces me I actually exist. I personally think it's irresponsible to set up these weird transcendental expectations. If anyone reading this has yet to fall in love or be in a long term relationship, it's all flowery and cute and lovey at first and then one day you fart for the first time in front of her. There's like, non-subjectively evident demands that you agree to impose on yourself when becoming a union. Physical. Social. Emotional. I would not leave my wife if her mind was gone. Besides my irrational human attachment, I can't imagine putting my family, her family, our friends, through the experience of seeing her be abandoned by her life partner. Of having them experience evil unmask itself through the act of relegating her to a meat body, which we all are. I don't know why I felt such a strong urge to express my cynicism. I don't believe in souls, I guess is part of it. I also don't like when people get hyped into expecting the universe from others. My wife loves me deeply, I feel it when she randomly puts her head on my shoulder or I catch her staring at me. She would also yell at me in embarrassment if I farted loudly next to her at the grocery store.

srvmshr 5y ago
Very well put. My remark about 'true love' was this exact cynicism. And like you, I mirror the exact same feelings for my wife. The Mills & Boone type of romances do not exist in real life. Deep love is crafted incrementally each day of being together, like an old oak tree sinking its roots ever deeper. It is perhaps the gravitas and wordsmanship which makes the author's story remarkable. It exposed us to his thought process, and the minutaé of his feelings. As a thinking species, we perhaps appreciate this expressivity. These adversities are more common than depicted & many couples with disabilities do share meaningful time together.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Yes for sure. I hope I did not diminish those experiences. It is really awesome to be in love. I understand its sway. I appreciate how we almost reflexively communicate about those emotions in bits of poetry. They splay out in so many directions, it's like we're picking fruits from an orchard and showing each other what we discover. It's really nice to get to be in the orchard.

spoonjim 5y ago

True love exists, but it’s something that’s made, not found.