Significant Other

If I were to ask you about your significant other, what is the first thing to pop into your mind?  Is it how he looks when all dressed up?  (I’ve always said that any man looks great in a tuxedo!) 

Maybe your first impression is his looks, or how he speaks, what he drives, or where he lives.  Education, obvious income, height.  Those are how we immediately decide about people.  But those are such superficial things.  Certainly, I believe, not the most important ones.

The father of my children died relatively young. Yet even today, I can still recall his smell as he stepped from the shower, fresh.  I remember the feel of his skin beneath my fingertips.  I can hear his dorky snort as he laughed at something he thought was hilariously funny!  Yet what I remember the most is how he loved his children and how that love grew exponentially with each new grandchild.  Sadly, he didn’t even get to meet them all.  And the child who calls me GiGi would have had him wrapped so tightly around her little finger that he would never have recovered!  He would have adored her.

It’s funny, the things that flash through our minds as we try to describe our significant other to someone else.  What they look like, what they drive, their job. Yet those things are so insignificant to who they really are.  What is more important, at least to me, is their character.

What can you tell me about the real person?  What about ethics, integrity, honor?  We sometimes forget about the things that truly describe the person we are.  What draws us to that special someone we are willing to share our most intimate moments with?  Is it the one who looks good in a tux?  Or the one who would give that tux to someone who needs clothing?  Mine looked great in a tux but he would have, literally, given the shirt off his back to someone in need.

There are as many answers to these questions as there are people pondering them.  There really are no right or wrong answers to what qualities draw us to another human being.  What is important to one person may not matter to the next.  What is crucial is that we know what is important to us.  And perhaps why.

What qualities about your significant other drew you to them?