My husband, who reads this blog, has semi-playfully suggested that I write a post about him; and so, because I try (sometimes) (only when it serves me) to be a good and obedient little wifey, here we go.
Where to start.
My husband recently turned 41, and for his birthday, my parents mailed him one of those humorous little Hallmark greeting cards, which read, on the front: “There’s Everyone Else… And Then There’s You.”
The messages in Hallmark cards are, naturally, designed to be vague and generalized enough that they can apply to whomever you want. But this one… I was impressed. This one actually is oddly, specifically accurate about my husband. There truly are two categories of humans in the world: everyone else, and then there’s him.
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Recently he asked me to tell him how I would describe him to someone who didn’t know him — like, a mini character thumbnail, like if I were telling a new friend about him (as if I had “friends”, lol).
Thing is, unlike him, I positively suck at coming up with any kind of impromptu speech when put on the spot. I need to sit and stare at a blank Word document and turn words over and over in my head, kneading them like bread dough. So when he asked me, I was just like: “ummmm…..” and trailed off.
Now that I’ve had some time to knead:
The first word that I have chosen to describe him will probably seem anticlimactic, after such a prelude. When you first meet my husband, your initial impression will probably be that he is: Nice.
By that, I mean: he exudes warmth and approachability. He seems at once sincerely, deeply interested in who you are, and yet not overly serious, able to lighten up any moment with a quick, silly little joke. He makes even the most socially-awkward, phobic, neurotic, uncomfortable, neurodivergent types of people feel at ease in his company. Women, especially, feel safe around him and enjoy being his friend. He draws us like flies. We can’t stay away. He’s someone you want to open up to, to share your deepest problems with. It’s a quality that has made him both an excellent social worker for troubled children (his previous job) and an extremely good salesman (his current job). On the phone, he’s always able to get representatives to do things for him, to bend rules or give answers or find surprise discounts, whereas when I or any normal person try we’re met with an impersonal brick wall.
Even his physical appearance exudes “warm and approachable.” He is on the tall, built side without being overly, intimidatingly tall or beefy; he has soft, thick hair in a humble shade of dusty golden-brown, and eyes that are grayish blue but somehow a warm, comfy shade of grayish blue, like well-worn denim. He has an easy smile that comes off as natural even when it’s forced. And his speaking voice — it is one of his most attractive features, everyone says so. It is warm and deep. Listening to him talk is very, very nice.
But when you think you know him, you really have just barely scratched the surface.
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For a long time, I thought: he is too nice.
When we met I was 23 and he 27. It was at a Barnes & Noble coffee shop. I was in my last year of art school: a chaotic, flighty, unsettled, indecisive, alcoholic bulimic disaster of a person, but at least I was pretty in those days, very skinny and fair-skinned and young, with striking eyes that I accentuated with makeup, and thick curly hair that I’d dyed auburn. Between this appearance and the facade I put on (with the aid of a few pre-date drinks) of being “intelligent” and “literary” and “artistic” and “a little quirky,” I guess I was able to successfully lure him in, like a mirage. (Now that he’s seen the real me, seen that I’m just a lumpy, grumpy matron with thinning hair and a bad attitude and bad taste in most things, I’m still waiting for him to run screaming (we’ve been married almost 10 years and have four kids).)
Anyway, so after we first met, he pursued me persistently, and continued expressing interest in a relationship. But, even though I’d been initially charmed by his eloquence, intelligence, passion for medieval history, and blue eyes that reminded me of Cillian Murphy (my then celebrity crush), not to mention our eerie discovery that we shared a birthday, and the even eerier fact that he managed to guess my middle name on the first try, with no hints (I should have known right then!)… it wasn’t long before I managed to convince myself: no, he is too nice for me, way too nice. He is what they call a good man: a well-adjusted, button-down-and-khakis-wearing type of person with zero tattoos and good manners and a good job and no addictions to speak of. I am too evil and rotten. It will never work. No, I was only interested in gross, substance-abusing, trashy, unstable men who didn’t respect me nor even like me back — that was my type, back then. So, I started trying to cold-shoulder the nice guy from Barnes & Noble.
My husband is like a fairytale knight, though. His story is literally the fantasy that everyone who’s ever been friendzoned by a love interest daydreams about living in: “Maybe if I just don’t give up… Maybe if I try one more time, even though they keep rejecting me… maybe they’ll come around…”
See, the world, and common sense, will tell you to give up and move on; they’ve made it clear they don’t want you, so lay off!
Not my husband. Despite his very high degree of emotional intelligence, social sensitivity, and keen ability to demonstrate tact, he is also able, at times, to boldly and shamelessly disregard social conventions. He didn’t take no for an answer. He did the impossible, and managed to get close to me, me, who repels any kind of closeness like it’s my twin magnetic pole. I fully believe that he could actually teach a 400-level college course on How To Get The Girl.
Of course, part of his success in acquiring me may also have been due to the fact that, between the ages of 23 and 26, I began experimenting with religion and sobriety — basically, began to finally desire Goodness in my life, began to want to not be evil and rotten anymore, and began to see that perhaps a Nice Guy, a mentally-stable guy who thought I was worth fighting for for three straight years, against all odds, might actually be the best kind of guy.
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But here’s the thing though. Even then, I didn’t really know him yet. Yes he’s very nice — but that’s only the first layer.
He’s very good at being a salesman, at being a counselor, at being Nice — but at the end of the day, he just wants to be alone. To “decompress,” as he calls it. For him, that usually looks like: indulging in fantasy/sci-fi/horror media (a genre that provided an escape, for him, as a precocious, insatiably-curious child in a highly unstable household) and black tea by the bucketful, sweetened with an imported creamed honey that is his one and only real indulgence — he doesn’t really get excited about “stuff,” generally, and doesn’t desire much at all in the way of material goods, nor even really seem that focused on the material realm at all. He’s had the same basic wardrobe since before I knew him, has a terrible sense of direction, and isn’t too disturbed by messiness or ugliness or disarray.
Speaking of messy, the downstairs den of our house is his “man cave,” and that’s his happy place, where he has his big TV and his big gaming computer with all those little blinking lights and his mountains of RPG rule books and rows of old fantasy paperbacks. Turns out, he does have some addictions after all (doesn’t everyone!), which I didn’t realize when we first met. However, caffeine and nerdy films/games are still much better, healthier addictions to live with than some others I’d encountered on the dating scene.
So that’s the first secret layer beneath the surface: he’s a major introvert, despite the mask of extroversion, the ease with which he can navigate even the stickiest social situation. He needs to be alone, needs ample time to play around, to wander aimlessly through imaginary worlds, discovering new little gems to amuse himself with.
And his imagination can be a really dark, strange place, too. His train of thought goes tearing through some wild places; I often can’t believe the types of random, unhinged things he thinks up, the stories he makes ups on a dime. As a creator of fiction, he can come up with some horrifying shit. And when he starts talking about his worldview, he is actually more cynical, more bitter, than you initially thought: kind of a world-wise romantic, an idealist who has resigned himself to coping with reality. He’s not really just a ray of sunshine. He actually is capable of bitterness and anger and grouchiness and intense dislike.
But (and this is where it gets even more complex; this is one of his best and most perplexing qualities), he’s also intensely, senselessly loyal and devoted to those he calls his friends.
I guess it’s the same mysterious quality that enabled him to pursue me relentlessly without being deterred by my flakiness — the same quality that enabled him to survive being a social worker to kids who were at times cruel and even violent, who were often tragically past the point of saving; this same selfless boldness has empowered him to maintain close, long-term friendships with the individuals that he values. Even when those individuals make it difficult, to the point where certainly I, and probably most normal people, would give up on them. If he values you, he will never let you just float away. Sometimes it strikes me as so ridiculous and impractical. So humiliating, even! I admit I struggle to understand this capacity of is, but it fascinates me to no end.
It makes him very steady. Steady — that’s the other main adjective I’d use to describe him, along with Nice; even though he’s an IEE in socionics, a personality type characterized by its squirrelish distractability, by perpetually chasing after the next shiny fascinating little gem — my husband is, at his core, a steady and firm rock of a person. In the 11+ years that we’ve been together, I’ve changed drastically — reinvented myself, become a whole new person, with new rules of life, several times over. But he’s stayed, essentially, the same. Just always himself. It is very relaxing to exist around.
Whenever he appears in my dreams, it is invariably as a calm and steady unshakeable presence in an otherwise tumultuous and terrifying world. He keeps me grounded, I suppose. Without him I’d undoubtedly have floated off into the ether long ago.
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It will come as no surprise to you that, socially, he is our arms, legs, and face, as a couple. Oftentimes when we’re together, talking with someone new (i.e., he’s doing the talking and I’m standing there nodding twitchily and trying to figure out what to do with my face), he’ll make some comment or joke that makes my social fear flare up white-hot behind my eyes, like “stop!, what are you doing??! So inappropriate! You can’t just say that to them! We don’t know them that well!”, but, lo and behold, the other person is now laughing jovially, matching his freak, and suddenly they see my husband as their “buddy.” I cannot fathom. He is able to read people somehow. It is a superpower.
It is both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes he gets tired of people trauma-dumping on him, treating him as a free therapist. At the day’s end, he will gripe and fume to me about this — but the thing is, the reason it bothers him so much is because he’s actually extremely empathetic. He actually does care very deeply about people and their problems. So much that it wears him out, mentally and physically — makes him feel very “compressed.” It must be exhausting to be that caring of a person.
That’s the secret layer beneath the secret layer beneath the surface. When I have, on occasion, pointed this out to him, that he doesn’t actually “hate people” as he likes to claim, he will (jokingly) mutter a string of profanities into his comically-oversized mug of tea, eyes narrowed. Because he knows it is true.
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That is why, even though he’s less dogmatic than I, less philosophical, less concerned about the technical ethical consistency of this that or the other theoretical position — he’s actually a better person than I am, at heart. I have to study goodness like it’s a science and then try to measure it out like an exact recipe; but he has an instinct for goodness. The thing is, he really is that nice. “Nice” may seem trite and useless, to some, but imo genuine, basic, innate niceness is a very rare treasure to find in a person. It is true, there’s everyone else, and then there’s him.
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