Last night, it was chilly and cloudy outside. Bill had come home to telework in the afternoon, because the heating oil guy came by with a delivery and he didn’t want me to have to deal with it. I don’t have a problem dealing with the heating oil guy. I’ve done it before. But Bill was happy to do it, and is now allowed to telework when he can. In fact, I think it won’t be long before he’s back to working at home full-time. COVID-19 is ramping up again. Wiesbaden is now a red area.
So anyway, he was home yesterday afternoon. He asked me what I wanted for dinner. He proposed baked potato soup or going to the commissary to pick up steaks. I preferred the soup, so he made it from scratch, along with homemade buttermilk biscuits. Bear in mind, when I met him, he was a decent cook, but had a very limited culinary repertoire. He now makes pasta from scratch, brews his own beer, makes great cocktails, and bakes killer cookies. I don’t need to be eating a lot of the goodies he makes, but I have to admit, he’s a great cook. I taught him a lot, but he’s also learned a lot on his own.
Last night, we were enjoying the soup and biscuits and I took a picture of him cooking. I still can’t believe my good fortune. My life has not turned out the way I thought it would… and sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me that I didn’t end up in suburbia with a job and kids. But I really can’t complain, either. Bill is absolutely a prize.
This morning, he made breakfast, as usual. As I was about to tuck in, he hands me a pill. I said, “What’s this? A roofie?”
He said, “No, that’s Vitamin D. We don’t get much sun this time of year. And if you get sick with COVID-19, Vitamin D supposedly helps shorten the duration of the sickness.” That’s Bill, always looking out for other people besides himself. It’s a wonderful quality.
It occurred to me that no one has ever genuinely cared about me as much as Bill does. Not even my parents. He thinks of other people all the time. He works with me to make our lives the way we want them to be. He’s mature and kind and absolutely the opposite of the stereotypical man. When I think of the circumstances of how we met, I still can’t believe my luck.
I was reading the news this morning, once again reading comments. I noticed that a lot of men really dislike it when a woman takes them to task. There’s a contingent of men out there who are very offended by opinionated women. My dad was like that. He didn’t appreciate the fact that I spoke up. He complained that I was “arrogant”, mainly because I argued with him and didn’t call him “Sir”.
I mentioned to Bill that a lot of those types of men, after being really condescending to women, will eventually lose their patience and call them the c-word. It’s happened to me on more than one occasion. A lot of guys think that’s the best weapon to use against women who they think need to be brought down a peg. Frankly, I think it’s very weak on their part, calling someone a “cunt” because you don’t like what they say or how they say it, especially if you would only call females that. In fact, I know that when a man calls me a “cunt”, they have grown frustrated and pathetic, especially when they also add the word “fat”.
Given that a lot of men enjoy access to women’s sexual parts, and most everyone owes their lives to some woman’s cunt, along with other reproductive organs, it makes little sense to use that word as an insult. So I usually laugh when a stranger does that to me… because I know that many men might hate my personality, but they would enjoy having free and total access to that part of my body, even if they found me otherwise unappealing. If they could only access that and nothing else, except maybe my breasts, they’d be pretty happy. Although there are plenty of men out there who are thoughtful, kind, and appreciative of women as people, there are also a lot of men who really just see women as objects with whom they can be sexually gratified. And a BIG clue to me that I’m dealing with that type of man is when he calls me something like “fat cunt”. It really is very sad to the point of being funny.
I am grateful that I found a man who values almost everything about me, even the negative things. He doesn’t see me as simply a life support system for my sexual parts. He cares very much about me and wants the best for me… and he doesn’t mind making me soup for dinner. He thinks about my well-being and cares about my feelings. I’m sure a lot of women before me thought he was dull or needed improvement. A lot of women think nice, kind men like Bill are boring. I know Ex was never happy with what she had… until she married #3 and confessed to her daughters that Bill was a better husband. But count me as glad I found a loving man who cares so very much.
I know men who are divorced from their ex wives and still very bitter. I will admit that I’ve been bitter about Bill’s ex, even as I am grateful that she divorced him. But I have never heard Bill refer to his ex wife with disrespectful terms. I’ve never heard him to refer to any woman in degrading terms. He doesn’t even use the word “bitch” toward most women… not even his Ex, who definitely would deserve such a moniker.
He even admits to his part in their disastrous pairing. He was young, inexperienced, and thought he could “save” Ex and her son. It was classic “white knight” syndrome… the same mentality that leads religious people to adopt children in an attempt to bring them to the gospel. Ultimately, it’s self-serving behavior that is rooted in one’s ego. No one wants to be pitied, particularly when it comes to marriage proposals. A person who proposes marriage out of pity instead of love isn’t asking for the right reasons, and that will probably doom the relationship to failure. The ten years Bill spent with Ex were not good. I think of them as years akin to being spent wearing ill-fitting shoes or a misaligned dental crown. Sorta functional, but uncomfortable, unpleasant, and likely to disintegrate…
Next month, we’ll celebrate our 18th anniversary and I can state with no hesitation that they’ve been good years… easy years… mainly because we love being together and have fun, even when there’s no money. I realize that we’re very lucky, and I just wanted to write about it today. But I do still wonder how I ended up in this life and not in the life I thought I would have. Was it luck or fate? It’s hard to tell… but I’m glad we’re together.