My friendly Valentine

Yesterday, my wife and I celebrated one of a good many Valentine's Days in our relationship.

Perhaps it was year 40 or somewhere close to that; I can’t quite remember. Thankfully, best friends don’t judge each other and my wife seems to have an abundant amount of grace in that department. 

Whatever the number is, I know we are better friends now than we were when we decided to marry and spend our lives together.

Strangely, this year we appear to have also both forgotten where our reusable Valentine’s card is. For a few years, we used to recycle and re-sign the same card each year, but now we are getting a little older, neither of us can quite remember where we last left the card. 

Of course, in any long-term relationship we live through ups and downs, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I have probably been the cause of most of the ugly.

What was always important to us was to “keep living” through those difficult times.

Of course, we had to make changes in the way we lived our lives sometimes, we adjusted to the circumstances, but we always lived with hope that we were in control of our destiny.

That was perhaps the fire in our relationship.

I realize now that it is not love that gets us through difficult times, it is friendship. We always advised our children that they should marry their best friend.

Even today, I would still rather spend a day with Jackie than any other option.

We enjoy each other’s company, we share goals, we agree and disagree on a variety of subjects, we argue just the way you would expect after 33 years of marriage, but we remain best friends. 

Happy belated Valentine’s Day.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.