Arguments Did Not Challenge the Commitment

Lynn and I argued.

That feels important to say plainly, because it would be easy to make our love sound unreal if I left that out. We were not a fantasy couple untouched by irritation, disagreement, fatigue, or ordinary human frustration.

But our arguments did not challenge the commitment.

That was the difference.

In the family I came from, conflict did not feel safe. Disagreement could mean danger, withdrawal, humiliation, silence, or power. My parents did not seem to argue openly. My father seemed to submerge his opinions beneath my mother’s, and I always suspected those unspoken differences were still there, simmering beneath the surface.

With Lynn and me, it was different.

We disagreed.

We argued.

But love itself was never in question.

I remember one night in particular: a friend’s chapbook release downtown. The drive there was short, but a fight lingered between us. I do not remember what we were fighting about. That may be the most revealing part. Even much closer to the time, I doubt I could have told the story of the argument with any precision.

The argument did not last in memory.

The repair did.

At the café, we sat upstairs, the silence stretching across the small table.

Finally, I stood.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

In matter-of-fact fashion, I went downstairs to the bar and ordered an iced tea the way I knew Lynn liked hers. I walked over to Jean and ordered two books and asked him to autograph one for Lynn and one for me, which he did.

I went back upstairs and walked around the table, gently put her tea down beside her and handed her the copy of the book that Jean autographed for her.

“This is your copy,” I said. “Signed by Jean.”

Her smile bloomed before she could stop it.

“How can I stay mad at you when you do stuff like this?” she said, shaking her head, laughter already in her voice.

I looked at her, incredulous and emphatic, but tender.

“What? Just because we’re fighting does not mean I don’t still love you! I still love you. Always!”

That was the truth.

It was the truth she already knew but maybe needed to hear in that moment. It was also the truth I needed to learn by living it.

Frustration did not cancel devotion.

Disagreement did not erase tenderness.

Love did not disappear because two people were upset.

That certainty was new to me ever since I was with Lynn.

And it was healing.

The End of the Day

I do not remember exactly when it began, but I came to cherish a particular closeness at night.

Lynn would move through her evening — putting away the nebulizer, tidying, doing the ordinary things people do before bed. Then she would slip into bed beside me, naked, without hesitation.

It was not staged.

It was not self-conscious.

It was trust, pure and unguarded.

Her comfort in her own body.

Her comfort with me.

I did not even try not to look. I cherished that profound gesture of closeness. She sensed my reaction, knew what it meant, and seemed to delight in what her actions said about her desire to be close to me.

It was not automatically an invitation to sex. I learned quickly that there was a difference.

Sometimes I would reach for her, tracing the curve of her breast with my hand, sensing whether she wanted more. If she murmured, “I just want to sleep tonight, sweetie” my hand became still as we spooned.

The gift was already given.

Her body against mine.

Her warmth pressed close.

The steady rhythm of our breathing finding the same pace.

Either of us could say stop, and it would be honored — no questions, no pressure, no injury to the bond.

That awe never faded.

Not the first time.

Not the hundredth.

Each night carried the same quiet astonishment: that she trusted me, that she wanted me there, skin to skin, with nothing between us.

Anyone watching us in public might have seen friction and missed the repair.

Jean Arthur Jones once told me he noticed how often Lynn and I argued. He did not know the other side: the book I had signed for her even while we were not speaking, the iced tea I carried upstairs, the way she laughed through the tension when I reminded her that fighting did not mean I loved her any less.

He could not have seen how the day ended.

Two bodies pressed together in bed, holding to the deeper truth beneath every word spoken in frustration.

Back then, in many families I knew — and in the couples I saw on television — an argument meant someone slept on the couch.

We never did.

Not once.

Across all our years together, no argument ever sent either of us to another room or the couch.

We never made a rule about not going to bed angry. Over thousands of nights, we simply did not stay angry long enough to sleep apart.

Instead, nights ended with our bodies together, holding one another.

Memories of Abuse Invading My Dreams

Later, memories of the abuse I had endured from my parents, especially my mother, began entering my dreams.

It was as if my dreaming mind said, It is safe to remember this now. Lynn is beside you.

Even in the safety of our home, my body remembered.

The nightmares came without warning. In them, I was not powerless in the way I had been as a child. I was fighting back. I shouted. Sometimes I swung in my sleep, though never with the force I feared.

Waking brought a different fear.

What if I had struck Lynn?

What if my body, lost inside an old terror, had brought harm where I meant only love?

I told her, shaken, how real it had felt — the violence, the rage, the old fear turned into resistance.

Her answer was calm and steady.

“You didn’t hit me,” she said. “You didn’t even move that much. You shouted, and I woke up. That’s all.”

Then, more softly, “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

I was profoundly concerned about it. I knew I had been dreaming that my arms were flailing, fighting back against my mother, against the abuse, against everything my younger self had been unable to stop.

But Lynn told me my hands had not moved much.

She reassured me that she was safe.

That mattered more than I can easily explain.

I could never imagine hurting her. Violence was not who I was. It was not who I wanted to be. But in sleep, some older part of me was finally fighting back against shadows my conscious mind had always restrained. It had nothing to do with Lynn. She just happened to be in bed asleep with me.

She did not make me feel ashamed of what my body was trying to survive in dreams.

She just held me as I turned and let my back rest against her body. Her presence created the serenity of sleep.

The dreams had just begun and I was 28. Perhaps the peace of her presence allowed old memories to surface. Perhaps her love gave me safety enough to stop disappearing.

Secure in her love, my body rehearsed what my younger self had never dared: resistance.

What Faded

By 1995, my twenty-ninth year, the nightmares had begun to fade. I don't know exactly when they stopped, or whether they ever fully did. What I know is that they no longer defined me the way they once had.

The past had not disappeared. But it was no longer defining me in the same way. The memories had surfaced, moved through my body, and then receded.

What remained was Lynn — steady, unshaken, holding me each time until the fear dissolved.

She did not try to fix me.

She did not pull away.

She stayed.

And in her presence, night after night, healing took root.

Difference Without Separation

Lynn and I did not believe all the same things.

At the time, I was Christian. Lynn was not. She was spiritual, open to mystery, but not Christian in the way I was. We could disagree about religion, morality, and the meaning of things.

But I did not need her to be a “good Christian lady.”

I needed her to be Lynn.

And she was.

Our differences did not become threats. They did not become tests of loyalty. They did not become reasons to withdraw love.

We could say, “I see it differently,” and stay close.

I remember very little of what most of those arguments were about. That seems right to me now. The content of the disagreement faded.

The repair remained.

The closeness remained.

The bed remained ours.

The night remained ours.

Love was never in question.