Googling brought me to an essay by Ayelet Waldman (I'd never heard of her) who proclaimed that she loved her husband more than her children. Quite different from what I was feeling at the moment. Turns out, her husband is Michael Chabon, who is pretty good-looking, very successful, and, according to Ms. Waldman,
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that my husband, too, is easy to love. It especially hit me the next morning, as he patiently laid in bed trying to get another half hour of semi-sleep while the baby babbled noisily beside us. Thank goodness she was content to lay there babbling on her own while I caressed him and said sorry. Further thoughts of reconnecting flowed as I did my morning run, seeing a gorgeous full moon setting, thinking back on past romantic times with my husband, grateful he watched the baby each morning when I ran. And while I don't feel the need to compare and say I love my husband more than my daughter, I felt happy to have been prompted by Ms. Waldman's essay to examine my own feelings and try to better understand them.
It's funny that I had multiple "encounters" with the Chabons out of the blue. Just a couple days ago I put several old books up for sale on Amazon and the first one that sold was Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I actually never got into. What a coincidence that I would stumble upon his wife's work the next day and that it would relate to my life in a real way.
I am now thinking more about how I need to keep the passion going between me and my husband—and that doesn't mean just sexually. In some ways, sex comes easily. It's the whole deal of being generally excited and happy about someone that is so key, I think. Not wanting to just roll your eyes and be like, "what now?"
I've been pretty passionate about the baby, being a super-duper on-demand breastfeeder, having her sleep with us, staying home with her. (Almost like one of the AP devotees Ms. Waldman describes in another of her essays, but not exactly, because I don't rudely push my beliefs on others.) Sometimes, my uber-passionate feelings have even led me to behave irrationally during tough times with her, because I'd gotten too wrapped up in her. Taking it personally when she was fussy. Thinking she was ungrateful or didn't like me. Things that are not attributable to a baby, of course. (My husband brought me back to reality on those points.) Still, the beauty and cuteness of my baby enhanced by the maternal hormones and the cuddly closeness we share together so many hours each day, all make it easy to be deeply in love with her.
I have to remember, though, not to forget the hardworking, loving and patient man whose hard work and planning allows me to have the luxury of staying home with the baby, and whose very physical contribution has given me the gift of growing this baby—a real-life expression of our love. She is part of him and me—and I am so blessed to have them both.
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Love of any sort is the source of diverse experiences. Our loved ones need not be in competition for our love, as if it were a limited commodity, however. I have found that by loving our capacity to love increases.
I recall that at some points when my children were quite young and I found them more lovable than my husband, I reminded myself that part of him was part of them, and I was actually just in this big circle of loving.
It seems that the times when I feel unloved by those that I love are the times that I proceed to behave in a most unlovable fashion. That is quite another circle -- more like a tangled web!
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