The secret to a happy relationship

Hanging out with one of my best friends a few months back, listening to music, talking about life and love and friendship and family and all the wonderful and horrible things that make us who we are.

Her parents have been married for 32 years and are still MADLY in love, and scandalously, wonderfully affectionate. "Like newlyweds." She and her sisters have known since they were very young to never disturb their parents if the bedroom door was shut.

These are two people who love each other Very Much. When I would go visit her house in high school, this was explicitly clear to me simply by watching the way they interact with each other. It was completely foreign, but completely wonderful to see.

Her sister once asked their father who he would choose, if he had to save either his wife or his children. If a comic book style scenario arose that made him decide between the two.

"I'd choose you, of course," he said to his daughter.

"No, seriously, Dad. Honestly, who would you choose?"

"Well," he thought, "Instinctively, I'd probably choose your mother."

Her mother has always told the girls that their father comes first; that she loves them all very much, but that he is her partner and comes first in her life.

...

I always thought logic and evolution dictate that a parent's children be the most important thing in his or her life; but perhaps my thinking is flawed. It seems that being madly in love generates a better relationship and family life, that in turn provides better for the children than a 'mama bear' approach ever could. And besides, if the children all die in a fire, as long as the mate survives, mama bear can always make more baby bears.

Too often, people will make babies because they really want babies, rather than because they love their partners so much that they want to produce a tiny genetic collaboration.

Perhaps the secret of happiness is to find someone with whom you are madly in love. To love and protect your children, if you have them, but to first and foremost love and protect each other.