Sometimes Love Just Isn’t EnoUgh
At the end of next month Jan and I will celebrate our Ruby Wedding anniversary. Time to draft a bit of speechifying methinks.
“We were much younger then and, if we are honest, not utterly sure of the outcome, but we signed a contract to bind us.
It’s actually more than forty years now since we started our relationship. Right from those early days we explored many ways to make things work. Often we selfishly started with what was best for us as an individual. But we were big enough to realise that we had chosen our partner because we rather liked them and that helped us to take their hopes, wants and needs and mix them in with ours.
Once we had made that small but significant step, we started to really grow together. Protecting your own interests while desperate not to hurt someone you think of as so very special is a struggle. Occasionally we more or less gave in to the other’s demands but so much more often we found a way to work things through with positives for both of us.
Definitely a struggle… but a struggle that revealed countless things about each other which we wanted to hold fast to and build on. A struggle which strengthened us rather than pushed us apart. We became better together than we ever were on our own.
There is love, of course - love in all its different expressions. But there is now so much more. The intricate and complicated nature of our partnership makes it at turns vibrant and frustrating… but always gloriously enriching.
There… I could just as easily be describing our marriage instead of the British union with Europe, couldn’t I?
Our marriage will endure and grow. After all those same wonderful connections made over decades it is so sad that a nation has decided to give up its previously rewarding struggle and discard its partner.
Jan and I intend to live and work in peace with the decision made on the 23 June.
Our marriage remains our wonderful and enduring achievement. We will never let it go. We will never let each other go.
Some things were not meant to be.
Jan and I were always meant to be.”
While fearing the worst, I still hope I can utter different words to our invited guests in six weeks time. If not, we will still have something magnificent to celebrate and Jan and I will be together to share whatever comes.
Sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes… let’s be honest, almost always, we need to draw on much more complicated connections. Connections which have been forged over a time long enough to give truly serious thought to breaking those precious links.
“We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than that which divides us.”
(Jo Cox, British politician)