Finding and Keeping Love

So telling, love and adoration, sans make-up and with puffy eyes.

I’ve just flipped my desk calendar from April to May. Seriously, the first week of May is lost already, forever. Wow! Each day just seems to slip by. Maybe because I feel I always want for the day to end, for sunset to come quickly, to go past the peak of summer heat from 10am to 3pm. The middle section of the house feels like it’s roasting during those hours.

How’s your summer so far? Good for you who are at work during the day. Summer’s weekdays are just like any workday in the year because you still need that shawl or coat owing to the cooler settings of your office ‘aircon.’ Thanks to SM for its presence even in provinces, their supermalls offer many a respite. Malling is to many, without work or on school break, an escape from the heat. I have a thing for SM, sorry, guys, I know I have mentioned it in several posts, not by sheer intention. I just kind of run into it as I write, like now.

Incidentally, I found myself staring at a Kultura boutique in Pico de Loro, Nasugbu, Batangas last Sunday. I asked a hotel staff if the prices were the same as in SM department stores. Yes, I was told. I learned that SM is the owner of Pico de Loro. A few years back, I was asked at Taal Vista Hotel in Tagaytay if I had an SM advantage card. Enough said about SM.

So what have I to share? I lost that writing streak during the last two weeks of April. Here’s May now, and this is my first attempt to write again. I have actually quite a few in mind. There’s as I’ve mentioned the trip to Nasugbu. That was actually to celebrate my 13^th I-Do anniversary with the hubs and kids. And then I was thinking of sharing how we are trying so hard to train the kids to consistently say po and opo. Today, I had Garrett help me clean the windows and all the curves and crannies of the window grills. It’s a great way to spend the last weeks of summer, teaching the children some new chores, after they’ve already been treated to trips to the beach or any vacation away from home. Garrett also washed his shoes, for the first time! Embarrassing, I know, for an 11 year-old to be taught just now. I’d say let’s not dwell on that.

The most cheesy and controversial posts normally get the more number of hits or visits. On that note, I will proceed to let you in on some thoughts I had the days around my wedding anniversary. My present musings are inspired by an article in the Huffington Post I had read yesterday. It went by the title The Surprising Truth About What Makes Happy Couples Happy. Catchy enough? It caught me, for one. But reading it just validates what I know already. Aha! Yup, the hubs and I appear to be a happy couple. Not to brag or anything. The core secret to our being blessed with ‘seeming’ marital bliss is #5 in the article, let me quote that in full below:

5. Know how to repair. No relationship will be free of difficulty or conflict. 

And no matter how well-meaning we are as partners, 

none of us will be a candidate for sainthood. 

Given that, it's essential that we learn to repair.

While there's no one-size-fits-all approach, repair begins with 

one person moving toward the other with an intention to heal. 

Effective couples are able to both apologize and forgive 

and to own up to the part they played in the difficulty.

We’ve had our fights. Luckily, not big ones. But there were a few times, the crazy in me would figure in arguments. Usually, just via texts, I would drop the ultimate “dare.” “Let’s just separate,” I had said that not once I think. But lucky me, I have a very sensible husband who doesn’t make patol. He keeps quiet, leaves my texts unanswered most of the time, which drives me crazier that I would send further texts of dramatic proportions. And he ignores me, comes home, doesn’t talk, and keeps to himself. His silence calms me, makes me think rational again, and in the end, I would be the one to approach and make him feel I was sorry. I have a big ego, I don’t easily say sorry. And he knows that, has accepted my egotistic self as his wife. So, we carry on, and we're now on our way to our 14th anniversary. It's not a sure, smooth-sailing journey. Like any other couple's, it's bumpy, scary at times, but we are happier, stronger, and more confident together than apart. 

On the road – beautiful road, I must say, to Nasugbu, taking the Cavitex and the new Ternate, Cavite – Nasugbu route, and passing under the Kaybiang Tunnel – I recounted how my husband would drive all the way from Cagayan Valley, all of 14-16 hours, to Los Baños just to see me every month for five years before we got married. I told him that that must have been love, because if it wasn’t love, I didn’t know what was. Haha, of course, that’s cliché! But it’s true. And Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight reminded me of that beautiful line. Go see that movie! It’s very relatable.

So to my married friends, here’s my two cents’ worth, if you don’t mind my meddling. Unless your spouse is in a relationship or fling with someone else, he/she is hurting you physically or verbally, or he/she is being lazy providing for you and the family, take heart. You’re blessed to have a long-time partner. Breathe, forgive, heal, and love.