I hear they are hard to come by, that there are but a few…I have even been told they exist only in the fancy of our girlhood dreams…they are Good Men. And I suppose they are hard to come by, that there are but a few and that they are in fact the material of our dreams. I often feel I must be living a dream when I stop and look at the good man who is my husband. My breath catches, not because he resembles the prince charming of my picture books but because he embodies the essence of “Divine Spirit,” complex and evolving.
This catching of breath most often happens during our children’s bath time for that is their time. I rarely bathe our kids, and when I do they are both acutely aware that I am but a pinch hitter in what is their sacred bonding time with Papa. There is never a day wherein I have to remind him that it is bath night, for these are his holy days, days wherein he is home from work before six in the evening, days wherein he has focused upon their time as the light at the end of his tunnel. It is right and beautiful and it is reflective of the honor within him.
Furthermore, he treats our time together with as much reverence and honor. He longs for the moments we have in the company of one another the way most long to win riches in the lottery. It is true that he has never sent me flowers, that he lets anniversaries and Hallmark holidays marked for lovers slip by without gifts, he has never bought me jewels, and when he married me he proposed over eggs and toast sans ring and romance. There was no wedding, but a simple ceremony unseen by the majority of people in our lives. However, he is one of the brave and the few who is madly in love me and with the life we share. He desires to be a devoted father and a loving husband. This is worth more than all the roses and diamonds in the world.
But what of the husbands who haven fallen short of their wives’ expectations, who may have strayed, who may resist, who may have with them still the heavy baggage of their boyhood, are they not Good Men? Often times women continue to love and stand by these men—be they addicts, infidels, or assholes. Yet are they ever allowed to transcend those transgressions and be the Good Men for whom we pine or are they forever cast in the role of destroyer? I do not live under the illusion that my husband has been a loving, kind, compassionate man to all the women in his life. I know of a few who consider him more akin to a narcissist. However, knowing his past I still found his potential to out weigh the risks. I found the compassion to let him be the reflection of benevolence and found the will to seal the evidence of his transgressions from further examination.
Maybe it is merely the space to grow that makes a Good Man good. Let’s face it, we screw up and when we are in a partnership we screw up more than just ourselves. However, there must be room to evolve, to make amends, to truly reflect upon our past actions and in doing so allow such to be the catalyst for greatness. Good Men are as hard to come by as we make them. Regardless of the wounds that are the collateral damage of decisions made in the past, every man has the right to metamorphose into a devoted father and loving husband. If we loose faith in our mate’s ability to become his highest self then we destroy the very possibility of greatness. We then become the saboteur, the emotional infidel forever in love with a man who cannot be, and we become the asshole left in the cold wondering why there are so few Good Men in the world.
