What My Heart Says

"Baby, we've been spending a lot of time together. And you've indicated that you'd like me to back off for awhile. I'm overwhelming you, and I'm sorry for that. I'll back off, and spend more time away from you. No problem," I say, a thick ball of ice forming in the pit of my stomach.

We discuss the details for awhile, possibilities for frequency and scheduling, and I assure her that whatever she needs is okay.

Then, suddenly, she asks me, "What does your heart say?"

Shocked, I reply in a soft voice, "I don't think you can handle what my heart would say."

"You're probably right."

After a moment, I ask, "Do you want to hear it anyway?"

"Do you want to tell me?"

I hesistate, and then begin to speak.

"I love you. I love you with everything inside me. You are the person in the world I most want to spend time with, be friends with, discover, and love.

"I want to be with you. I want to do fun things together with you; community events, exploring nature, canoeing, hiking, fishing. I want to see movies and listen to music and act in plays and see bands with you. I want to spend time talking with you, discovering you, learning from you, sharing my heart and passion with you. I want to respect your need for solitude and individualism and privacy, and at the same time being always available to you to hear your heart whenever you need it. I want to be your friend.

"I want to go to dinners and lunches with you. I want to buy you flowers and treats and jewellery and pretty cards and lingerie and clothes. I want to create romantic moments with you. I want to explore the limits of my creativity to romance and bless and please you. I want to spend time memorising romantic poetry and recite it to you. I want to hold your hand and gaze deeply into your eyes, losing myself in them. I want to stare at your beauty and marvel at it, enraptured. I want to nourish and nurture the passion I feel for you, stoking the flames higher and higher. I want to ignite passion in you, intensifying it hotter and stronger, and then satiating it again and again. I want to be your lover and beloved.

"I want to buy some new rings. I want to plan a wedding with you. I want to write vows with you. I want to stand in a public place, in front of everyone that matters, and pledge new vows to you. I want to utterly divorce myself from the “old me", from our old marriage, from my preconceptions and misconceptions of the past. I want to pledge eternal fidelity, exclusivity, and sacrificial love to you. I want to pledge to join you spiritually, to be a leader in our family that you can respect. I want to pledge mutual submission to you; to always listen to you, to always try to understand you, to always take you seriously. I want to pledge to respect you, your needs, your thoughts, your ideas, your needs, your desires, your wishes. I would like to discuss with you the possibility of choosing a new family name that we could share together; not to end your individuality or connection with your heritage, but to create something with you that is completely new and special to us and our family, that we can all share in together.

"I want to become your husband.

"I want to love you. I want to love you the way you want and need to be loved, for the rest of our lives. I want to love you sacrificially and generously, not with expectations or demands but with selfless giving. I want to continue to grow and develop as a person, caring for my heart and meeting my own needs. I want to encourage your growth and independence and ability and confidence. I want to facilitate you becoming fully yourself, whoever you are, whoever you need to become. I want to be your partner in life, your supporter, your biggest fan.

"That's what my heart says."

"Why don't you write that down?" she suggests.

So I did.