What I Love about Steve

So Steve read my post about his anger-management problems and, you guessed it, got a little angry. Not door-breaking angry, but sort of hurt-angry. I think he also read a comment someone made, where she told me to dump him. Well the problem with a blog is that is it necessarily one-sided, and usually written when passions are running high. So you're going to get a skewed view. Remember in Bridget Jones's Diary (my all-time favorite movie---Jenna and I saw it in theaters over fifteen times), when Mark Darcy reads Bridget's diary and gets miffed? Bridget had been angry at something Mark did and wrote really awful things about him in the diary. He walked out after reading the diary, but then did something that very few people do---he reflected on the incident.

And that's one of the things I love about Steve. He's a hothead, absolutely. So, for that matter, is Jenna, who has been my closest friend for over thirty years. It's the way they are. Mark (my ex, not Mark Darcy) is the opposite of a hothead. You never even feel like he's listening to what you are saying; you can't get a reaction. A lot of times, I used to end up screaming at him because I just wanted to know he was paying attention. I never have that problem with Steve. And please don't tell me that there's never an excuse for violence and Steve broke a door. He broke the door; he didn't lay a finger on me! I, who generally do not have that kind of explosive temper, once flung a plate of spaghetti at Mark. And Jenna takes the cake. She once, in a fit of premenstrual pique, picked up a 19-inch television, carried it down the stairs, and threw it out into the snow.

So, anyway, what I love about Steve is that he always takes what I say seriously and then tries to do the right thing. This relationship has been very difficult because of all kinds of external things. Let's face it, both of us have failed at past relationships. So it's so nice that, even if he gets mad upon first hearing or reading, he goes back and regroups. Many times, because I am unable to articulate what is bothering me, I send him e-mails. He responds to each point I make using a different color and sends it back to me. You might not like that, but I do. So this time, I told him I wasn't feeling very appreciated for my good points. All I wanted was for him to tell me what it was that he liked about me. We all tend to focus on people's shortcomings; it takes a conscious effort to instead remember the good things, and then to share them with the other person. Since then, that is what Steve has been doing. I love getting the e-mails (again, the way he sends me most of these little notes).

Examples:

I love your sense of humour and I love that we laugh at the same things.

You are a very caring, nice person. I admire you for that.

I like that you do not seem to have the same hangups that other women have about my "roving eye." All men are like this, and it's nice that you recognize that some men just hide the looking better. (More on this in a later blog.)

These are things I think are good about me, and it's nice that Steve appreciates them. I have sent Steve some of the things I admire as well. I've told him I like his enthusiasm for life, his sense of wonder at learning new things, and his sense of humor (I spell it the American way, LOL).

Yesterday, he left a little post-it with a heart on it on my PC so that I found it after he went to work. Then, later in the day, he sent me a poem. Not just any poem, but one that I had sent him back when our love was new and exciting: John Donne's "The Good Morrow":

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.


All of this made my heart beat faster and remember why we put ourselves through all this trouble. We really are each other's world. But sometimes it's hard to "watch not one another out of fear." Everyone have doubts, but amor vincit omnia.