A Defense of Love Like Ours

This was inspired by my cousin, who wrote a post asking readers to tell her what they are grateful for.

I’ll give it a shot.

My husband.

He’s an honest, obvious choice.

Friday we were driving home from a date and I said, “Mike, I’m so glad we’re together.”

“Yeah, what would you do if you were still single?" He challenged, joking, "You’d have no one to yell at…and no one to yell back.”

Anyone who is unmatched knows the din of their own voice faintly echoed back when there is no one to receive it. Whether it’s an empty room, the wrong partner, or someone whose shouting drowns yours.

Mike and I have the perfect volley.

And while I could end this post and leave readers musing “aw, how sweet”, I’m compelled to palpate the subject further. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it fairly clinical.

I found the pleasure of Mike’s audience and companionship so satisfying, that I got to the point where I couldn’t fathom doing a thing without telling him about it or wishing he had been there. Unlike the familiar stupid ache of obsession, or vanity of not wanting to be alone (that which kept me close to other men) such idiocy was happily absent from our interactions. There was simple, pure, mutual adoration. Our relationship lined up in that which is logical, unavoidable.

Last week he said, "We're made for each other. It's an inevitability." This came after a morning of benign bickering, seated at a deli, sharing a plate of cheese, olives, and salami. A few tears were rolling down my face; I had just seen a man with a moustache like my father’s. Mike offered me his drink as a distraction.

"I don't like grape soda." I grumbled.

"Okay, what's your favorite flavor?"

"I don't have one."

"What's your favorite fruit?"

"Raspberry."

"That's what this is, they mislabeled it."

Weeks before our wedding, Mike offered me G.K. Chesterton’s essay, A Defence of Rash Vows, as an argument for our pending nuptials. Chesterton says, “The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment.”

I thought how most women would have retreated from the seemingly unromantic sentiment. But the essay continues,

“A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man.”

We faced the extraordinary as ordinary people, uncertain of our capacities to love, walking the edge of what might be considered insanity. But instead of hiding from our insecurities alone, we climbed into the same foxhole.

“And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.”

Mike supplied the logic of Chesteron’s position, the chaining together of two mountains, as perfectly rational. That he could touch the seriousness of marriage with irreverent yet profound musings from a fat old philosopher assured me I wasn’t dealing with “another man.” Though it felt a little like a grade school boyfriend vowing lifelong love after seeing his girl on the swing-set, it was his best and most honest expression.

And I accepted, more certain than ever.

“The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration…The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.”

I’m grateful that doubt doesn’t long cloud our minds after a fight, that death’s fierceness cannot cause us to withdraw from each other, and that having won a logical, not whimsical, arguement for love rules our hearts and vows.