by Michael J Link

Created on: October 07, 2009   Last Updated: October 09, 2009

I'm in the Philippines. I have a beautiful wife. I have a one year old daughter so gorgeous that even women holding their own babies stop and gasp and throw out superlatives. I just walked away from a six year gig in my first actual professional career and encouraged my wife to do the same so we could travel to her homeland and introduce our daughter to her grandparents. I drive a nice SUV that is less than a year old... that we not only got without benefit of a co-signer but got at an unheard of rate because... my credit is so good... I knew I wasn't the loser SHE made me feel like.

POISON ORCHID

"Men are pigs". "Men can't commit". "Men don't know how to be romantic". "All men cheat". I'd heard these things all my life... from sitcoms when I wasn't getting it from real women. Having not dated until I was 22, I had no way of telling how true they were... or weren't.

What I did know was these statements did not describe me at all. None of them. I loved romance. I respected women - men and children and dogs, too. I was willing to commit to the first 15 - 20 women I was attracted to if they'd have had me.

What I never expected to discover was that the above derogatory statements could describe a woman. I certainly never expected that when I discovered one, she would be the one I gave my heart to completely.

This is not about my wife. My wife is the one who completes me the way a mate is supposed to. My wife is the one I was supposed to wait for and save all that emotional investment for. My wife is the one who makes me feel not only like a worthy man but the best man who ever lived. My wife is the one who decided that I, and no other, was the man she wanted to be the father of her children. No, this isn't about my wonderful partner, who possesses all of the wonderful emotional stability and generosity of emotion common to her Filipino ancestry. This is about... HER. The one who tried her best to make sure I never knew such happiness and fulfillment. The one from that other nationality, known for emotional incompleteness within and an unquenchable desire to spew emotional abuse to others, especially to those who dare love them.

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We met at work. I had always heard that was taboo, but I did not go to bars much and nothing was happening with the nice girls at church or the library. And standing in the produce section looking helpless turned out to be an overrated tactic. By the way, so did the most common cliche quoted by happily married people: "When you

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