Always First Thought in Am;Last Thought in PM

We had been working all day today, spoke twice on the phone, he went home and I continued from my office. About two and half hours later a text message comes through saying, "skate, be there later" because when heattended to home , his obligatory tolerance was tested and battled against, so he decided he needed to vent no more and go skate ! I usually intervene when he talks and that is why we refrain from communicating intensely on a daily basis, he saves it. He was probably expecting the same approach, but I surprised him.

We drove off and he talked most of the way to our destination, the skating rink of our decade-long relationship, a constant calm in the sea of chaos our respective responsibilities lend us. I listened with intent to never interject unless asked or gestured to do so. This amazed him because only when I answered he could feel no threat from my direction or gentle intervention.

He is bold but not full of emotion, sincere but controlled in his deliberation to fend off guilt, pity, sympathy, even love. Accused of being less than he is, he surrenders to low self-esteem feelings as if everything and everyone can make him be what he is not. I encourage him to let no-one push him around, to let no-one create turmoil for him, to let no-one come between his roles of self-actualization: father, son, brother, husband, lover and friend--but who is the chamelean, and what color does he adopt in calm? It is a beautiful shade of caramel-colored taffy and just as sweet. I stared into those baby browns and felt the real love shining through the desperation in choices made over years.

To assuage his insecurities, I hugged him fully and just loved him. I assured him he is strong, versatile, proud but flexible and certainly not defiant in giving all he has, because all of us are much better than we were before. He has successfully done his part and then some. Men have a tough time when expected to be the moral, financial, physical and psychological stronghold of the two people in a healthy heterosexual relationship; while the woman can be all or none of those things and still be expecting all to regard her with respect, especially when offspring are produced from such a coupling.

Perhaps when offspring are not produced in a union, that union for itself can be made stronger and more profound than any that has strings attached, i.e. children, alimony, child-support, cars, furniture, real estate, shared property, etc. A man and woman also are freer without the shackles of responsible procreation expression that comes to fruitionbetween parents. You stay together for the sake of the children. You do your duty as a good Christian. You accept your responsibility to a person who depends completely on you for the first 20 years of their life, the last five being the easiest to slowly disengage oneself from. You discard your individuality and sacrifice your personhood, for the sake of a family.

But if the thoughts come flooding in and haunting you with the psyche you put up on a shelf to be the 'better-man', showing you that you are not supposedto bestrictly cut-out for parental responsibility and false representation of communal living between each partner, than bolt ! Let nothing and no-one stop you or get in the way of what your feeling. It was entrapment . . . he was feeling like he had been thrown into a net he could not find the right instrument to cut free from theweb of deceit this net was fashioned from. I gave him some hope, more than he was having rendered to him on the homefront, and he acdepted it with a tender touch. Feeling like over there he had noappreciation and little trust, I proved him otherwise here. When I did, and that he could count on me, I could see it in his eyes, a freed sense of guilt. As we looked up to the stars and shared a deep passionate embrace, Alicia Keys made it clear that no-one could ever get in the way of what him or Iwere feeling. Sure enough I reminded him why I am always his first thought in the morning and his last thought before he retires to sleep.

No one else will ever do . . . or so I have been told