The Completion of Ourself

One of the things I direly wished for in a life partner was the ability to bounce ideas off, and have ideas bounced off in return.  When I discovered Lisa, I wondered, deep down, if I had found this rare quality....

Once, in what seems like a very long time ago, I was stuck in writing this massive fantasy novel, which I never completed because of other reasons.  But, that’s not the point.  The point is, I was stuck.  I had written myself into corner.  And honestly, I was lost.





I meandered around between all the friends I had left following a year out of highschool, bouncing my story off of them, seeing what bounced back.  Can you believe it took four months to get unstuck?  Mike Pullen of all people said something that made my mind snap.  It was an off hand remark, but it made absolute sense.

The characters had been captured by beings that were so powerful that the protagonists couldn’t escape.  A true corner.  Mike said something to the key of, “What do these bad guys want?”  Such a simple line, and it turned into a plot about the antagonists sending the protagonists to get something the antagonists couldn’t.  Genius.

Turned into the best action sequence I have ever wrote.  And to this day, no one has ever read it.  Such is the way of stories that don’t get finished.  But getting back to the point I’m trying to make, is that no matter how good of friends that I had, they weren’t the type of people to answer all my questions.

I knew I needed that in a relationship, someone who could actually understand me, and where I’m coming from.  To have that kind of friend, the kind of friend that you share life with, was going to be the friend I married.  The first thing that attracted me to Lisa was the fact that she had published novels.  She had accomplished a dream I always had, and for that I could respect her.



Upon our relationship becoming what it is now, we both discovered that we respected each other fully, and we suddenly found what neither of us ever dreamed we find in our relationship.  The first thing Lisa tried to instill in me was that I was a better writer than she was, which is still something we contest each other about, as she’s published, and I’m not.  But still she insists.

My argument that she’s better, is that she can listen to me talk about plots and ideas, and give me solid responses back.  She’s my sounding board, and she’s been very shocked to have that returned.  What we’ve found is that we make each other’s writing better.  Writing is supposed to be such a solitary thing, something you do on your own, but we boost each other in every way, including that.

The fact is, I’ve learned that if your spouse doesn’t make you better at what you want to do, then the relationship isn’t what it could be.  It was probably the biggest red flag I had with my other failed relationships, it was definitely the biggest one I ignored, as I shelved my dreams in other relationships.  In this one, my dreams thrive, they grow like they’ve never grown before.  Everyone needs this in their life, this love....

Hopefully the people the deserve it, find the happiness I’ve found, because there is no greater happiness than being with someone who fully supports you and your dreams.  “Yeah.  This is the stuff.”  This is the stuff, indeed.