I was talking to someone special recently and he asked me a very interesting question.
‘What is most important to you in a relationship? What is most important in a partner?’
And I pondered his words, but only for a short time. Because the answer was already there. It unfolded within me like the silver wings of a glass butterfly.
The problem was I didn’t know how to verbalise it. I didn’t know how to say it aloud.
Because up until this very moment, when this special person showed the guts to really ask, I had only known my answer as a feeling. I felt it in my gut in the same way we know some things to be right and some to be wrong.
Sure I’d been asked before, but not like this. Not from someone who really wanted the answer.
Never in that tell-me-because-I-want-so-badly-to-give-it-to-you kind of way.
It was said in that I-wanna-hear-you-list-my-good-qualities kind of way before. And I had always answered so vaguely. Lots of mention of ‘the one’ and ‘when you know you know’.
But when this special person asked the question, I answered differently for the first time in my life. I took pause to translate the feeling into words. To sort through the beautiful bullshit and find something real. And it came out as this:
I want a man who has the inner strength required to be kind, even when life is weighing heavily upon him. I want that man who is careful with me, even when we face tragedy together. I want the man who tries his very best to not let a bad day or week or year be an excuse to treat me coldly. Because often in our darkest moments kindness is the last option. It can become an unnecessary nicety. Sadly, this often happens in the time when it is needed most.
Strength is not brute. It isn’t measured in muscle fibres. To me, strength is measured through a mans ability to remain kind, even when life has been unkind to him. This man with a rare and wonderful kindness, he is the man for me.
Much love xoxo
