I’m looking for a brighter subject, rather than the traditional lonely doper thread. So tell me why you love your SO, don’t give me any glurging nonspecific stuff. I’m interested in nice heart-warming specifics. If he or she is funny I want to read about what he or she did to make you laugh. If he or she is sweet, I’d like to hear about the last nice thing they did for you.
Melt me like an lolcat.
Because we have enough similar interests to keep us together, but enough separate interests to stop us smothering each other.
Because he’s my best friend, knows me better than anyone else and accepts me warts and all.
Because he’s smart and talented and dedicated.
Because he’s a crutch when I’m limping, and he’ll let me be his crutch when he’s limping.
Ops, you didn’t want any glurge.
Ok, cos he’ll hold my hair back if I’m vomiting. 
My SO and I had been together for about six weeks when Valentine’s Day rolled around. We managed to spend the night of the 13th together (we live about an hour apart), and both went off to work on the 14th.
When I got to work, the Dispatch Director called to me and said, “I have something for you!” She was very excited - a package had been delivered for me the previous Friday, with instructions for it to be given to me on Valentine’s Day.
She pulled a big box out from under her desk and gave it to me. I saw it had my SO’s return address and was amazed. By this time of course, I had quite an audience watching me.
I opened it up and found a stuffed snow leopard with a t-shirt bearing the message, “World’s Greatest EMT. You rescued my heart and now it’s yours. XOXOXO”
This was no cheesy saw-dust filled stuffed animal, either. He’s soft and plushy. It was a Build-A-Bear, kinda like this guy. (I can’t find the snow leopard - he must have been discontinued)
Very cute. I was so impressed. He’d called and ordered it, and then called my office and arranged to have it sent there, and told my Dispatcher not to give it to me till Valentine’s Day.
He’s always hiding sappy cards around for me to find (in the fridge or under my pillow) and always seems to know when to send me an e-card to cheer me up.
He’s wonderful.
When I was getting to know my husband, the first thing that struck me about him was how unbelievably kind he was. He is a phenomenally good listener. I paid attention to the fact that not only was he good at listening to me, he was good at listening to everyone around him. He is the sort of guy that would bring you chicken soup if you were sick. He did this for everyone around him, this was the way he moved through life – with kindness and awareness, and a clear sense of gratitude for the relationships he had.
I first knew he was someone special when he helped me move into a new apartment, and despite having no mechanical skills or pain tolerance whatsoever, he helped me assemble a computer desk over the course of 9 hours. We finished at 3am. We had a blast, too, just chatting and goofing around as we put it together. Then he slept over at my house when we were finished. He was going to sleep on the couch but I told him I didn’t mind if he crashed with me. Nothing happened, and honestly my mind wasn’t even going there, I just felt really safe and happy as we drifted off to sleep.
Move forward a couple of months… we’ve been IMing on a regular basis and visiting on the weekends, really talking about some pretty heavy stuff, just baring our souls and still going on believing we are just friends.
Oh, and another thing you have to understand: I am really weird. By weird, I mean, I have my own personal amoeba impression, I enjoy creatures with tentacles and the idea of any creature that lacks a skeletal structure, like, say, a slug. I get excited about strange things. I have encountered many people who accept my weirdness, but few who actually seem to understand it.
One day I was having a really bad day, and he said to me,
‘‘I wish I were there right now, because I would wrap you up into a great big hug.’’
And I said, ‘‘If you did that, I would melt into a little puddle on the floor.’’
Pause. And his reply: ‘‘Then I would only scoop you up into a container, wait until you re-solidified and hug you all over again.’’
You have no idea how monumental that is. He was not only accepting the way I am, but approaching me on my own level. He just instinctively understood who I was and took great joy in going there with me… and in retrospect he says he paused in his reply because he knew what it would mean to me and what it would mean about us.
Not long after that, we professed that we had fallen in love with one another, and made plans to meet. To understand this next part, you have to grasp that I have serious issues when it comes to trust, romance, and sex. I mean, I have trauma. He showed up at my door with flowers, then we went into my bedroom and we kissed.
And I proceeded to have the biggest panic attack ever. I started sobbing and I broke up with him on the spot. I said, ‘‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I don’t know why. I’m sorry.’’ This dude had driven over an hour to spend the weekend with me, and I can’t imagine this is how he’d been hoping things would go. If I were him, I would have been pretty pissed–at least frustrated, maybe embarrassed–and left immediately.
But he didn’t leave. He sat down next to me on the bed, put his arms around me, and said, ‘‘It’s okay. I just want what’s best for you.’’ He ended up staying the night. While I was sleeping that evening, he got up in the middle of the night and wrote me a 12 page handwritten letter that said, in essence, ‘‘I don’t care if it takes years for you to work out this trauma and I have to wait years just to get a kiss, I just want you in my life forever.’’
Well, that was 5 years ago. And unfortunately it has taken years to work it out, but we’ve done it together. You really can’t fathom the depth of his love… I know I can’t, and at that time in my life it didn’t fit in with anything I understood about the way the world worked.
I did expect him to get tired of it and eventually realize he didn’t really mean all that… there has to be limits to what one person can tolerate. But he somehow stuck with me through it all. There were times he had to drag me out of bed, make me bathe and eat because I was so depressed… the time he spent 7 hours in the hospital waiting room with me when I was being admitted for psychiatric care, the thousands of times our romantic nights were ruined by my PTSD… he always had a way of making it okay. He would just wrap me up in blankets and we would just talk for hours, and he never made me feel guilty like it was my fault.
I’m a lot healthier now, but our love abides. I know at this point that I have brought him as much joy as he has brought me… and I sort of get why – I am ridiculously silly and I think capable of great love and compassion. What makes our love work is that we both have Big Plans in our own little niches… he wants to be a child clinical psychologist and I want to travel the world and maybe do Mexico-U.S. research with my Spanish. The point is, we’ve got this little core, this little home, to protect us.
I recently read a book that posited the following metaphor for a marriage: marriage is like your base camp when you’re a mountain climber. It is your refuge but during the day you are out on your own climbing mountains. When you come back to your base camp, you have to know it is stable, safe, and well-kept. It gives you the rest and nourishment you need to get up the energy to go out and climb more mountains.
I could write a novel about why I love my husband. But maybe with this little glimpse you’ll grasp the depth of my feelings for him. I think to most people he comes off as this quiet, decent, nerdy little dude. But to me, he’s like some kind of crazy warrior who walks unflinchingly into battle. My god, I’m so blessed.
I’d feel silly writing what I was going to write, after that. Nice post, olive.
Because she’s warped the same way I am. We share the same interests and put about the same emphasis on things.
Because she loves me. Too many of my former girlfriends were only halfheartedly interested, and didn’t fully reciprocate. Love with feedback is continually self-sustaining thing. It’s like feeedback in a laser, or an audio system
Because she puts up with my geek-oriented analogies about love.
Because she doesn’t mind me putting all my "artifacts" in the basement and in the garage, above the garage, in our livng room, in my office, in the closet under the stairs… and every once in a awhile at a flea market she’ll say something like…I bet you want that thing…pointing to an old tool or rock. It may not mean much to anyone else, but to me it’s life and love.
Much like Olive I treasure the simple moments where I know she is listening to my every word. She knows me, the true me and my deepest goals and aspirations. She tells me when I am not feeling aligned to her, and when she is not feeling aligned…she is in tune with her emotions and tends to wear them on her sleeve. And finally, she puts up with the morning after a chili dinner
Because two days ago he said something, and then said, “Ah, you’re making that snorffling 'I’m partly amused and partly irritated” noise."
I didn’t even know I made that noise. But he does, and he thinks it’s funny.
Because he doesn’t mind when I randomly start reading something aloud to him, like the middle of a philosophical argument in a novel.
Because we don’t mind each other’s sudden, mad enthusiasms for odd things, like the way I’ll abandon all housework in order to spend the day on my Hallowe’een costume in January, and he’ll spend several weeks devoted to trying to learn Welsh.
I like him. He’s interesting, silly, and he pays attention. Those are good things.
The first thing that attracted me to him was his wit. Back in college he was sharp as a tack (still is) and his sense of humor was caustic (toned down a bit now). He was quick on the ball with a comeback and always funny as hell, and even as his words bit into you he’d be laughing.
He still comes out with absolutely devastating one-liners these days and makes me laugh. He’s far quicker on the uptake with me, and it’s my absolute favorite thing about him.
I knew he was the one when, early in our relationship, my cat became seriously ill and had to go the emergency room. He sat with me at the vet for 4 hours while I worried and waited. He didn’t complain once. And he didn’t even like cats much at the time.
People always go out of their way to impress each other early in a relationship, but we’ve been together for 3 1/2 years and I know he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
He reads lolcats with me and does the voices.
He’s like me in our ability to get suddenly and completely obsessed with something, so he rolls his eyes but doesn’t laugh at me for picking up woodwork and suddenly learning EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW about it. And I do the same for him when he gets obsessed with wet-plate photography.
He eats everything I cook him, and he likes it, sincerely, even that one time I burned the holy hell out of it. He said it tasted chargrilled.
He generally knows just what I’m talking about.
We’re in tune and comfortable enough that he can call me “Pottamus” because I’ve gained some weight, and it doesn’t bother me.
Because he was willing to fly halfway across the continent, not to mention a national border, to see a girl he met online (three times).
Because I know that I want nothing more to help him when he needs it in any way I can, and that he feels the same way about me.
Because he took the time to get to know a girl who described herself as a ‘frigid bitch’, and warmed his way into her heart.
Because he enjoys when I say things like “I’d try to rip your ovaries out if it wouldn’t hurt my monitor.”
Because we both have the kind of sense of humour that led us and our friends to be the only people in the theatre laughing at Mr. Brooks.
There are times my husband seems to be a little self centered or more into our son than me, but then he’ll just blow my mind by affectionately imitating something I never even realized he knew about. For example, when I’ve been looking for something for awhile and finally find it, I always exclaim “You old African! Kunta Kinte, I found you!” And yes, I’ve done that since Roots first came on TV in the 70’s. Just last month, after 12 years of marriage, he said it when he found his hat. I just melted. I also melted when he say, in a creepy tone, “Turkey, turkey, turkey, gobble-gay. We’ll eat you on Thanksgiving Day.” to our turkey last year, just like I always do.
I came down to Maryland to meet him for the first time, after we’d been talking for a few months online, and our first date was fantastic - it was like we’d known each other for ages. He had a trip to Montreal planned for a month later, but he couldn’t wait that long. Two weeks after meeting me for the first time, he made the 12-hour drive up to spend a weekend with me.
He likes that I’m not skinny. He loves anything I cook for him, even though I know those blueberry pancakes last weekend were still smooshy inside. He gets me presents that mean something, because he pays attention to things I say without me even noticing. He’s trying to learn a little French, because I’m French-Canadian - my family all speak English, but I think it’s sweet that he’s making an effort. He built me a computer and a Tivo-type-thing, and he doesn’t mind being my tech support all the time. He listens to me whining about work, and he tries to give me a different perspective on some problems, to help me figure things out. He doesn’t get upset at me when I have depressed days and I don’t want to talk to anyone - he just tells me to take it easy and feel better soon, and he’ll be around whenever I’m ready to talk again. He’s always saying that I should do whatever makes me happy.
I think one of the reasons I love him so much is because he loves me so much despite all my dorkiness. I actually think he loves me because of the dorkiness, so I really hit the jackpot here!
My husband thinks I’m the prettiest, sexiest, smartest woman in the world. He laughs at my jokes, loves my cats (because they’re MY cats, not because he loves cats in general), adores my cooking. He’ll cry when it’s appropriate, without shame, laugh with his whole body, would die or kill for me, and even help with the housework, without bitching *too * much, if I ask. I mentioned that my cats had killed a rat, and that I needed to go out with the shovel and clean it up, and he did it for me, without me even hinting that I wanted him to do it. He’s been the strong one to deal with euthanizing the last two pets of mine that needed it, God bless him. He goes to my choral concerts even though he doesn’t care for classical music much. He shares a lot of my interests, such as forensics and crime. We share values, even though he gives me credit for being much more moral and ethical than he is. He loves my world-view, even though he can’t really share it. He loves to “see things through my eyes”. He’s all I need in the world, really.
He knows how to work with me better than anyone else, and it makes me a better person.
Because of him, I’ve gotten over a fear of flying that was so crippling that I didn’t fly for 12 years. I just always feel safe around him. I work harder through his motivation–I got my first 4.0 quarter in college the quarter I met him. I wouldn’t be where I am because of him, and that was when we were just friends!
Plus, he’s good-looking, shares my outlook on pretty much anything of importance, is always willing to try new things, cleans when I cook, takes care of me when I’m sick, and makes me laugh and learn every single day.
About three weeks after we started dating, my SO called me. I was having coffee with a friend at the time, so I let the call go to voice mail.
I checked the message later and he had left this message:
If you don’t know, that’s Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. The SO had no idea that this was one of my favorite movies growing up. He was just being weird.
That’s when I knew that he was the one for me.
Awww. :: snif ::
This thread makes me feel all gooshy inside. 
We’ve been together over 34 years, married for over 26 years, and she’s still hot.
She also automatically assumes that I’m a fully competent adult capable of making my own decisons, and that whatever I’m choosing to do is being done because it’s in the best interest of myself/our relationship/our family, so it’s fine with her, just call so she’ll know when to expect me. I try hard to extend to her the same courtesy.
IRTTOP,
Because she has the audacity to love me.
'Nuff said.