What romance really looks like. So this is marriage....

What romance really looks like.

So this is marriage....

When you think about romance or marriage, what comes to mind? I know in the beginning of our marriage, I had my ideas of what its supposed to look like; Ideas that mostly came from movies or other couples I'd seen. Through my distorted perception, cuz lets face it, when we look at others' supposed happiness and judge life through the book covers/facebook posts people like to project, our lenses are greatly distorted, my husband was never really the romantic type. He did things for me, like washed the dishes and vacuumed the floors, but he didn't really buy things for me, like flowers or jewelry. Of course after some years in training, he definitely improved in the flower/jewelry area:) , but It took me some time to learn my own lessons in romance as well, which is that some husbands are the flowers and jewelry type and some husbands are the vacuum the floors type. 

Anyway, fast forward to 15 years later, and I realize now more than ever what romance really looks like. 

Romance looks like a man who holds his wife's hand throughout her entire experience of a difficult diagnosis and multiple surgeries, who can crack jokes over the situation when his wife is at the level of peeing on a commode in the middle of the room, who can make sexual innuendos out of any humiliating position he has to see his wife in and somehow make her feel sexy and attractive nonetheless, and who takes his wife in a wheelchair to homegoods at less than a week post op, even though he absolutely hates shopping, especially home accessory shopping, because he knows how much she misses being able to physically go into a store and shop like she used to. 

The day we went to homegoods, is the day I fell in love with my husband all over again. I've fallen for him many times, but this time takes the cake by far. I was honestly surprised he kept to his promise he had made to me in the hospital when I told him how much I desperately missed homegoods and he came up with a day to take me, and I had tears in my eyes as her wheeled me down the aisles in my wheelchair. 

Honestly, I was high as a kite on pain meds haha, and I was in terrible pain, but that didn't stop me from feeling such intense deep love for this man. I know why he did it, and it wasn't to earn any brownie points for later, and certainly not to earn bragging rights as husband of the year, as he would kill me for sharing this lol. He did it to make me happy, to alleviate some of my pain, and to take my mind off the horrendous experience I was having, so that I could get through another day of healing without feeling depressed, without feeling helpless, and without feeling inhuman on top of my pain.  

That is what real romance looks like. Romance isn't a piece of jewelry, romance isn't a hot date with flowers, romance isn't a sweet poem or gesture. Romance is loving your partner more than life itself, and wanting to do anything and everything to care for them more than they care for themselves. Romance is selfless. Romance is true. Romance is living, really living, being true to yourself and your partner. 

So if this is what marriage really looks like....I'll take it! I'll take it over any romance or fairy tale I have seen or heard, and I will know that what happened is true. What happened is real. And I can only hope and pray that I will be just as good to him as he has been to me if our roles were ever reversed, and if he ever G-d forbid  needs me the way I need him. 

I love this man always and forever, and I thank this difficult year in my life for reminding me of how great of a man and life I truly have. 

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of us at homegoods, but I do have one of us heading to Ikea two days later, because, yeah, he did that too:)