Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid... Aren't They?
Think about your best friend when you were in junior high school. You told her - or him - absolutely everything. You talked about your greatest dreams and your deepest fears. You told each other what you wanted in a spouse someday. You talked about all those things that really interested you and held your attention.
I believe marriage between best friends can only come about through that kind of openness and honesty. Marriage between lovers can be rife with secrets. Marriage between best friends holds no secrets.
My husband is my best friend. He wasn't my best friend when we were first married. In fact, for the first few years I didn't even like him much of the time. Oh, I was madly in love with him, yes. But I didn't like him a lot of the time.
But we've been honest. As in any friendship, the honesty has brought us closer. We know one another very, very well. When he has a problem I know about it, and can help him solve it. When I have a problem, I know he is there, at my side, to help me overcome every obstacle in my way.
That's not to say it's always easy to be fully honest with one's spouse - on the contrary, sometimes the road is rocky indeed. But what's the point in intimacy that isn't intimate? What's the point in being loved - when the one who loves you doesn't really know you?
I am luckier than my husband is - he is easier to tell things to than I am. If I do something I feel ashamed of, like snapping at a clerk at the grocery store, I can tell him about it, and he listens and acknowledges me without censure. If I notice the Arrowhead delivery man is rather good looking, my husband is actually interested in hearing about it, with no insecurity getting in the way.
He, on the other hand, has to face my insecurity at times. And there have been things he's told me that were hard for me to hear. But in the long run, we both know it is much better for honesty to prevail, so he talks and I listen, and I try really hard to not get upset. When I do get upset, I express my thoughts and concerns and fears, and it eventually blows over. And we end up closer and closer
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