True love, old love

The thread about finding true love has stuck with me, and I have been thinking about it from time to time while running, or cleaning the kitchen, or just when I have time to muse. First, let me give some personal history. I'm 55 years old, as is my wife. We met at freshman orientation week at Macalester College in Minnesota. We were both 17. We started dating right away, and I knew pretty quickly we would marry, which we did just before our senior year. We were 20 years old. We finished at Macalester and went on for law school (me) and grad school (her). We have now been married 34 years, and I still get the urge to ask her to marry me. I mean that if we were just starting out, I would marry her tomorrow. One of the things I have learned, and that you can only discover with the passage of time in a relationship, is that new ways to love someone open up. For example, we had been married 14 years before our first child was born. After the birth, I realized I now loved my wife in a totally new way. Not that the old way was gone, or changed, but that I now had an additional way to love her...as the mother of my child, my partner in parenting. I still loved her the way I always had, but a new dimension was added. ( I was first attracted to my wife because she was SO smart, and so good-looking. I don't get tired of talking with her, or looking at her.) Something that people overlook, sometimes, when breaking up, is the value of shared memories. By now, my wife and I have a whole little private shorthand language, based on common memorable experiences. My respect for her has increased over the years, too. If I start to feel exasperated about something she is doing, I can remember the really trying times, when she has always been totally reliable, and has always acted based on sound ethical principles. Her integrity and honesty is something that I know I can count on, no matter what, and is something I was too young and dumb to think that much about at 20. ( Heck, what first caught my eye was that her hair was a foot longer than her skirt, I don't mean past her skirt, just longer if you measured both, which I did onetime!)
How do you find this? Mostly luck and the blessing of God, I think. I can't really say I was perceptive enough at 17 to even know what to look for. As I said, I looked for attractiveness and intelligence, but got so much more, and so much more that is so much more important. A person can be smart and good-looking and be a disaster, but I can truthfully say that living with her has made me a better person, and makes me want to be better than I am.
As for the feeling of "true love", or finding "the one".... Well, I don't believe there is one magic person who brings happiness, even though I also admit it feels like it. Part of it is commitment, and tenacity, and treating each other decently when it is hard. Back in the 1960's there was a high jumper named Dave Fosberry. Before this, high jumpers ran up to the bar and jumped over face down, with their backs to the sky. Fosberry started breaking records all over the place using what came to be known as the Fosberry Flop. He would run up to the bar, pivot in the air, and go over face up, with his chest arched toward the sky. Everyone started doing it this way, and going higher. When asked about his new technique, Fosberry said " I just throw my heart over the bar, and the rest of me has to follow." When I met my wife, I threw my heart over the bar. The rest of me had to follow.

Edited by HankJKy 2007-01-29 2:00 PM