M'anam Charaid-My Soulmate, My Best Friend

“I cannot picture what the life of the spirit would have been without him. He found me when my mind and soul were hungry and thirsty, and he fed them till our last hour together. It is such comradeships, made of seeing and dreaming, and thinking and laughing together, that make one feel that for those who have shared them there can be no parting.”

~Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance: An Autobiography~

Most little girls have pictures in our minds about how we want to grow up and find someone that loves us like the love you find in fairytales. Someone who will find us beautiful and kind and smart and will love us in challenging circumstances. And do chivalrous things for us...like slay dragons, climb towers, rescue us. Or waltz and sing with us in forests about meeting once upon a dream. We dream of the perfect wedding. The perfect family. The perfect life together with 2.5 children and a dog. It's the Christmas card.

We don't always find that though. Sometimes you find something entirely different. Something less than fairy tale perfect. That's what I found at first. And I married him.

It would be a gross understatement to say The Dreaded Ex and I were ill suited to one another. There was our mismatched temperments, the difference in our basic values and morals, and there was the case of our disparate backgrounds.

I grew up in a large city far from my mother's humble roots in a Yup'ik eskimo village on the Southwestern Bering Sea Coast of Alaska. I went to private school, summer camp, had vacations at my grandparents and great grandparents beach cabins. I played soccer for years and had a typical suburban American life with my siblings and parents. I was far from a traditional village girl, raised instead with strong Western values.  Although we struggled in my early years financially, my Daddy came from a good family and my well educated and incredibly nurturing eskimo mother wasn't your average village girl. They came from vastly differing demographics, but they were both headed in the same direction. Their love was and is a unique and admirable thing. I had amazing role models for love and family. Everyone I grew up around were like this. You got married to someone, you worked on it to keep your marriage strong, and you stayed married.

The Dreaded Ex grew up in the same remote Alaskan village my mother was from, raised by his grandparents and large extended family. Tormented while he grew by some ignorant people who didn't know any better than to pick on a child because of the circumstances of his birth-at the time being half-Yup'ik and half white and born to an unmarried mother who didn't stay with his father was something scandalous in the town. He was poor. He was trouble in school growing up. He was rebellious, angry, an opportunist, and did as much a he could get away with. He was pretty much born fighting. He was a bad boy. That carried over into our marriage, much to my chagrin. He answered to no one, especially not me. His marital vows meant little, if anything to him. 

With all due respect to the man I was married to, he does have some redeeming qualities, and there was a time I loved him. He is intelligent when he wants to be, compassionate when he thinks no one is looking, loves his children in his own way, and hard working. But that's about all I can remember that was good of him. I look at my marriage to him as the ultimate education for myself. Through my experiences with him, I gained my PhD of "What I don't want in my life". I owe him a debt of gratitude. Because of him, I know what I do and don't want in a partner, and what I will and won't stand for in how I am treated and loved in a relationship. I'm sure he can say the same about me. Love and marriage is a two person deal...most of the time.

Suffice it to say, our marriage was ill fated. Those who know more specific details of our marriage would say that I am being extremely generous and kind.

It was toward the end of my marriage, when it was almost unbearable, I met M'anam Charaid. My Best Friend. My Soulmate. He was quite a bit younger than I, so I didn't feel that anything serious would come of it. I mean, come on...I was still married. Technically. But, he wasn't from where I live. He lived and worked far away. He was safe. Or so I thought.

We spoke often after we met, we found we had much in common. Music. Love of cooking. We had the same sense of humor, same intelligence level, etc. We came from similar backgrounds where family and tradition were at the forefront. His heritage was the same as my Daddy's. We learned we had a lot more in common. The things we wanted out of life. Our drive. High standards.  So, we continued our friendship long distance. Instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, etc.

I liked talking to him. He was kind, funny and non-judgmental. He knew I was going through a lot in my personal life. He didn't know any details as I got to know him over the months of "the beginning of the end". It would be much later that he would became aware the full extent of what I was dealing with. He, like everyone else, was was aghast that a relationship could be so bad.

I remember one Friday night, after a particularly difficult afternoon of working with my divorce lawyer on interim agreements, division of assets worksheets, income spreadsheets, etc. that I broke down. I was alone at home, the children were visiting their father for the weekend. I was so emotionally exhausted and physically drained I just wanted to scream. Instead, I let loose the most painful and heartwrenching sobs I have ever cried. I was so sick of going over the negative things about my marriage, the failures, the character defects of both myself and the man I was married to, anything and everything wrong about both of us. 

I prayed, as I'm wont to do at the drop of a hat. And I decided right then and there to do something someone had mentioned to me about expectations and my future. I decided to write a letter to God/The Universe/My Creator. Positive things that I was going to work toward and invite into my life. I wrote down what things I needed in my life for stability, for predictability and for my own peace. The things I wanted to make sure I had to take care of my family. And then I paused. I considered if I should do the same for the kind of man I would accept into my life someday in the distant future. I began writing down just the characteristics of "my perfect man". No physical stuff-no ideal height, look, etc. It was after I had about twenty lines on my very specific list of characteristics in this fictional man that I realized something profound. I had just described my best friend to a tee. It shocked me to the core.

I kept that information to myself, held it in my chest and near my heart like a secret treasure for a few weeks. I never told him a thing. At some point, there was a realization on both our parts that feelings had shifted. I always knew he was attracted to me. And I was attracted to him-I had my secret knowledge tucked around me. But, one evening we were talking about our usual stuff. Teasing, funny banter back and forth. I didn't mention how long our conversation seemed that night. And then it got quiet.

"I don't want to go to bed."

"Why not?" I asked

"Because I want to keep talking to you..."

I chuckled. "I know the feeling."

"I really enjoy talking to you. I look forward to it every day."

I smiled. "Me too. 

Long pause on his part.

"I can't get you out of my head...I think about you all the time."

Silence for a few beats. My heart was thumping in my chest.

"I know the feeling..." I whispered.


I was thrilled that he felt the same way that I did. Over the many months and years, that would become our standard phrase..."I know the feeling." It was the shared statement, the acknowledgement of our understanding of the longing we felt. Of need. Of emotion. Of frustration. Of everything we couldn't say. And a confirmation of what we could. We taught each others how to love in the most basic way possible.

There were dreams of a future together. Wishes. There were spoken and unspoken rules of fidelity and faithfulness to the ideal of what we hoped we'd become. There were innumberable arguments of why it wouldn't work, and just as many as to why it would. There was hurt. There was unspeakable joy. There was betrayal. There was forgiveness. There was great respect, love, and understanding. There was laughter. There was jealousy. There was indifference. And there was separation of emotion. But, always there was friendship. I have said to him on many occasion, "We started as friends. We'll end as friends."

He still is my friend to this day. We still make each others laugh and think. I can talk to him about everything that is important to me in my life: my joys, hopes, successes, my children, my challenges. My life. He can do the same as well with his work, his business, his family and friendships, goals, successes and frustrations. We can share everything. All except one thing.

We still can't bring ourselves to talk to one another about dating or how we feel about each other. We don't talk as much as we used to. I think we are afraid to. I always know what he's thinking and what he wants me to say when he asks me "How are you?" I have to fight saying "I miss you..." and say "I'm great" instead. Someday, we'll be able to talk about the new romantic interests. New plans, new hopes, new dreams. Not today. Probably not tomorrow either. I don't know if we ever will be able to...



The point with both of these stories from my life is that we learn about who we are and what we want from each person we encounter, each person we allow ourselves to love. Loving someone can have many results. It can be destructive or it can be beautiful. It can terrify you in negative and positive ways. It can bring you to the brink of giving up or to a new place of indescribable joy you never knew you could experience.

The scary thing about love is that you have to willingly give someone else the power and ability to hurt you. You make yourself vulnerable to them. You don't know what will happen. Just like everything else in life worth having, you have to take it on faith that it will be okay, hope that you will come out intact and work hard at it if you want to succeed at it. Every person you love is an opportunity for growth. A chance to change yourself for the better. A great opportunity to learn. It's in the most unselfish love that you begin to understand what it is to care for another's joy and happiness more than your own. Whether or not that love lasts, one never leaves your heart and soul without an imprint...and some beautiful echoes in who they have helped you to become...