In my last essay, A spiritual life, I identified that many times people struggle with a binary choice. Is it this one or is it more that one? Is it capability that’s driving my choices, driving my thoughts and behaviors, or is it ambition?

So this one goes for me. I sat and looked at mature love and true friendship together for a long while. Which one is it? If I’m not able to walk in mature love, how can I be a deep, true friend? But.. Isn’t true friendship the highest form of love? Ultimately, as I revealed, True Friendship won the day in my sort.

But I often tell people, you know, this thing we’re doing, (the values card sort), isn’t a game. It’s not a game because you can neither win it nor lose it.

I suppose you could lose the exercise sort of if you failed to take it even a little bit seriously. If you were only sorting the cards for my sake or to get me off your case. But assuming you think a little and choose five cards honestly, then it’s been a success and you’re a winner. So forget what I said before… You can both win or lose this thing. But it’s not really a game.

I have also established that the big secret, as I’ve found anyway, to this sorting exercise is that they’re all important! They’re all valuable. I say to people, “as a marginally well adjusted human adult, you probably have a value for all 57 of these concepts, there are no negative values listed; there’s no punching babies card.”

I tell people that if, in two weeks time, you’re driving down the road or sitting in your chair and a value card you didn’t end up choosing pops into your mind, and if you let it linger there, if you let a concept like social recognition or wealth or preservation of my public image pops into your mind, why, then it’s been a double success because it means you’re beginning the process of thinking of your values more holistically! Everyone’s a winner here.

I have spent a lot of time driving down the road thinking about mature love. When I think of deep, emotional, spiritual intimacy I do think of my wife. There is simply nobody else whose relationship I can compare ours to. I revealed in True Friendship that I am utterly surrounded by friends and more than that, surrounded by friendship. I cannot escape it, I could not if I wanted to. If I ran away they would follow me. If I hid around corners or under beds they would find me. Friendship follows me.

But there is no friend I have like her. We have been married for twenty years! Which is not forty! But it’s not five! We have weathered many storms. Big ones like her cancer and my somewhat rocky mental health over the years. We have been there for one another, and when we’ve found ourselves not there for one another, we have mindfully redirected our attention back toward our chosen togetherness.

This is not the right choice for every couple, not the right choice for every situation. But it’s been the right thing for us and while we have many years and many trials and many successes waiting for us up around the bend, I am more committed than ever, I am more resolute and more in love.

I am resolute in my steadfast love for her, yes. But in that love I have discovered a resolution to a kind of steadfast love for myself that wasn’t familiar to me at the beginning. I am realizing and learning that almost always, the thing I can do for her is to mind myself. To care for the life I have to live and to be the best version of myself.

You know, at the beginning I was sold a belief system that was self-sacrificial. Which sounds excellent! It sounds loving on some levels. And certainly, in this life, there are times when we’re able to be self sacrificial and “take one for the team”. But very often, much more often, that resulted in a patriarchal sort of martyrdom that was at least intellectually dishonest. If I am always the one sacrificing for you, then I am the hero and you are the burden.

By not caring for my own self, by not putting on my own oxygen mask, by not observing and spending adequate energy addressing the log in my own eye, I was free to condescendingly and paternalistically “make room” for the speck in hers, in a show of false magnanimity.

And it all came so naturally to us, you know? Until it just didn’t.

I still want to be self sacrificial. I would still spend mine to conserve hers. But now it comes with a realization that she feels the same. Would do the same. Has done the same. Is still doing the same.

Today we’re both looking out for each other in this life. We’re both minding ourselves, walking into growth opportunities and developing postures of learning, awareness, curiosity. For ourselves, for each other.

The love we shared in our youth said “I am here for you”. The more matured love, (though not as mature is it shall be!), that we share today says “We are here together”. It is a subtle difference, perhaps. But one I wouldn’t trade for anything.

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