October 11

[RosaLinda]

Holy cow, I checked in on you last night, and found nothing new, and then again just now, and your thread is on page 3 already

I don't know. Maybe I don't love my wife, really. Maybe I want to love her. Or, maybe I want her to love me. Maybe I truly love her, and have never really felt her love for me the way I would want, and have therefore grown distant and cold.

Here's the thing....love is a choice. Not "being in love;" that is a sort of magical hormonal chemical fascination. You cannot get enough of your beloved, you need her to be happy, you yearn for her. It's exciting, it's like being high. Better than being high.

But loving someone, day in and day out for years and years, is different. It's a choice you have to make every single day. Love is caring for someone, wishing the best for her, doing your best to make her happy and meet her needs. Loving someone takes a lot of work once the hormone-driven emotions wear off.

Sometimes people forget how much they truly love their partner in mundane day to day life, until life's circumstances and the threat of loss force them to remember. When you and your wife married, you made an oath to love each other until death, through good and bad. You're experiencing the bad right now. But life has given you a rare opportunity to take stock of what you want, of the kind of husband and father you want to be, and to do something about it. Maybe you will decide that you never loved your wife, but you made that vow to love her through better or worse, and I hope that you will do your best to honor that vow and become the man she needs.

I'm glad so many strong men are writing to you, helping you to live your life with class, honor and dignity. Not "moving on" but "moving forward." Becoming the best B you can be. You can do this!