I met my wife when I was 23 (she was 26), and somehow managed to convince her to

accompany me on a date three months before my 24th birthday. We were engaged by the time I
was 26, married when I was 27. Every important step, save perhaps one, of my journey in to
manhood has been at her side.
I had not dated a lot by age 23, but I had had some formative experiences: The one you pursued
and who pursued you, but then you realized you were wrong for each other. The one you
desperately wanted to adore you back and did not. The one you made your first bumbling steps
into lust and passion with. The one you were with because you were lonely. The one you were
with because you were horny and selfish and, twelve years later, regret deceiving. And, most
importantly, the one you thought you were going to marry because you could not imagine loving
anyone more than her. (My line: I am not saying I am ready for it or not, but the last one on the
list is the only thing Ive havent experienced yet!)
First loving my wife was all of those emotions and lusts and passions made physical and
manifested with an intensity that burned my sanity to the ground. Every single youthful
conception of love was rendered into ash by her reality. I knew it with amazing clarity at my
young age, one of the few moments of cosmic lucidity I have ever experienced, mirrored only by
the utter poleaxe to my soul that came with first sight of my children.
For all that, building a successful marriage has been constant combat. The divorcement of desire
from self, the shouldering of shield and armor into the war that time and circumstance wage on
all relationships to protect my love's right hand comes with constant struggle pierced with joyful
reprieves. Children make that war all the more burdensome, tiresome, and constant, with new
foes from all directions. And yet they also, for me, solidified the worth of what it was I was
fighting for.
I knew true love in my twenties. I did not know its worth and its fragility until I had borne it ten
years and more.