In Sense and Sensibility, we see that the ideal relationships and marriages are based first on respect and secondly on friendship-and then built up from there. I think the current consensus is that things need be crazy and dramatic and exciting all the time in relationships-like Marianne says in Sense and Sensibility-'to love is to burn-to be on fire.' But she quickly learns that this is not true-to be on fire is to feel passionately, but you will inevitably get burned in the process and possibly never recover what you've lost. True love doesn't just spark brightly and then fizzle out once the passions gone. It endures, constant, bright, consistent and endless. It can be plain, and unexciting, even boring at times-but it will never fade. And that in itself is beautiful-this is a relationship built on the solid principle of friendship.
When we were younger, Lester would get me yellow roses which I guess stand for friendship, unlike the romanitc red ones. This was even after we'd been a couple-I remember one time he told me the saleslady said are you sure you don't want the red one for your girlfriend? I think she was worried he was sending the wrong message or something-but he was confident in the yellow ones, and they did the job of both making me his friend, and eventually more. I know that in my life I can honestly say just as Edward said to Eleanor, even in a moment of resigned heartbreak, 'your friendship has been the most important of my life'. And he can know that he will always have mine in return. The thing that has carried Lester and I through these small two years of marriage and many years of dating-through being apart, through being broke like a joke, through hard times, boring ones and happy ones is our friendship. We always find things to talk about, even the mundane, and we laugh more then should be aloud. We stopped being embarrassed around each other years ago, because friendship requires trust and is solidified through time and experience.
To be honest, I'm having a bit of a harder time adjusting to this place and new life then I would like to admit. Unfortunately, Lester's schedule is through the middle of the night, meaning he leaves and 7:30 PM, gets back at 7:30 AM then sleeps till about 3 or 4 PM just to be able to handle the next night. He works so hard, but I think being pregnant and spending a majority of my time alone is testing me. There are times where I feel completely alone and like I have no friends. But at the end of the day, I live with my best friend. And even if we don't get to spend much time together, OUR friendship endures, and the promise of this gets me through and helps me to look forward to each moment we get to spend together. Anyways-I know this is long and mushy, but it was something I need to remember in the moments when I feel alone next haha-I will leave you with Shakespear's Sonnet 116, which is quoted by Marianne several times, but never truly understood till the end of her journey to Colonel Brandon. It continues to ring true in my marraige.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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