On the other hand…

I’m always a little suspicious of women who say their husband is their best friend. Call me cynical, but I’ve seen a lot of marriages (from the outside) and many of them look…less than happy. But most of the time women with dead husbands will say how great they were. None of these posts are meant to imply that Randy was perfect. He could be a dick. He was indeed my best friend, but there were times in our marriage when I was pretty pissed off and he was pretty shut down emotionally. There was a lot going against us - second marriages often fail and between us we had a lot of baggage - 4 kids, 2 ex-spouses, financial struggles left over from bad marriages. But over our 28 years together we always knew that we loved each other. As time went on we both mellowed - he was more open and understood better what I needed, and I calmed down and understood better the way he dealt with emotion.

Most important, we really saw each other, knew each other as well as you can know another person. Randy was the only person who knew me completely and loved me anyway, unconditionally. And I can’t imagine I will ever find that again.