My marriage has been to me the most nourishing bread. From my marriage I know much of what can happen between a man and a woman - what healing and wholeness, what forgiveness and what strengthening.

But what I’ve read of in old romances has only happened to me in meetings and partings with men who had no claim on me nor I on them. When I read, as a girl, of people wasting away for love, I never believed it. Yet when I was twenty, three days after parting with the man who didn’t love me, I rose up from my couch and found all my ribs cowering, exposed, under my gaze. I’d lost twenty pounds. Those were dark days and it is partly due to them that I chose to marry the man who would heal me rather than waiting for a hypothetical man who would do like in the movies. I don’t regret my choice, the more so since the man who is healing me has also proven to be the man who leads me to God and His Church.

This past weekend I experienced something that I hardly know how to understand except in terms of gallantry such as I had thought obsolete. Not all that goes on between men and women can be named in terms of animal desire. Not all that is sexual has to do with sex.

But what surprises me most is that gallantry awoke for me. How did it come about that three modern men sat sighing around a modern girl, pressing their hearts with their hands, playing the guitar for her by turn, calling her endearing names, refraining from rough language and modern liberties of behavior, waiting on her, asking her to sing, and seizing her hands, crying, when she did?

How did I pass five hours in the guise of a lady? I have been many other individuals - arrogant little girl, awkward and despised teenager, dependable big sister, eager religious debator, depressed college student, desperate and even cruel religious seeker, grateful wife, weary Mama, aspiring writer, and always so much, so very much less than I wanted to be. I was never courted by anyone but my husband, never sought out in my native circles. How did it come about that on the night of my bosom friend’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by a few eccentric and very real men who made me feel adorable in some sense that has far more to do with what I share of feminine nature than with my dubious personal accomplishments?

There’s a certain permissiveness of speech from older to younger women that I call “the womens’ network.” It means that women can figure out how to understand and deal with relationships, their body, and similar issues by hearing about other women’s experiences. In the spirit of the womens’ network, I told Scottie’s grandmother what irony I felt that I should recieve such attention now I’m married, despite the fact I never recieved any like it before. I believe, I told her, that all my beauty actually comes from Scottie. If he hadn’t loved me when I was a gray, wasted, mute shell of girlhood there would be nothing for other men to see in me at all. That’s as may be; but she tells me that she thinks men feel safe “treating a woman right” if she’s already married, because they don’t have to be afraid of her calling the next day and “trying to get something started.”

This confirms to me that the way my gallants acted was very honest and pursued without thought of consequences or implications. That’s why I think that what I experienced allowed me to gaze for a few moments on the true nature of masculine and feminine, from a vantage point that only appears when the two meet outside the fog of passion. I saw protective gallantry, respectful delight on the one side; on the other confiding welcome and modest pleasure.

I don’t think my understanding of human sexuality can remain untouched - nor my expectations for my own future worth. Begone, bourgeois hopes. I will not seek to be commended to God or man by mere paltry achievement. Something more real must commend me.

And now my husband is waiting for me, a familiar, friendly, patient light in his eyes - the light of full, unique love in spite of full, sometimes sordid knowledge.

It’s a wonder, indeed - what goes on between men and women.